When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was prime minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, etc.—GEORGE ELIOT: Middlemarch, ii., ch. xix.

96. Sustained Effect.-Brevity is wholly compatible with an occasional long sentence well constructed. (For alternation of long and short sentences in the Paragraph, see $6.) The opposite of brevity is not many words, but useless words, verbiage. A long sentence perfectly clear in its grammatical relations, stating each position precisely and fully, summing up details for a general effect, has always been recognized as the completest embodiment of power. E. g.:

As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects the lords and commons of this realm,-the triple cord which no man can break; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation; the firm guarantees of each other's being and each other's rights; the joint and several securities, each in its place and order, for every kind and every quality of property and of dignity,—as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, and we are all safe together: the high from the blights of envy and the spoliation of rapacity; the low from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. -BURKE: A Letter to a Noble Lord, etc.

If discord and disunion shall wound it [American Liberty], if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand in the end by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.-WEBSTER: Reply to Hayne.

To get the full effect of Webster's eloquence, one should read the numerous short abrupt sentences immediately preceding the above.

The secret of success in passages like these from Burke and Webster lies in the impression which they create of the writer's or speaker's ability to maintain a protracted

sequence of thought and emotion. As in the physical, so also in the spiritual world, endurance is an acknowledged measure of strength.

97. Historical Present. This is a device for giving, if not exactly force, at least vivacity to a narrative. It presupposes in the writer a vivid imagination, by the operation of which past events seem to be actually present. Within proper limits the device is effective. But these limits are usually transgressed by the young, who change from past to present and back to past without motive or justification. E. g.:

The Romans now turn aside in quest of provisions. The Helvetians mistook the movement for retreat. They pursue and give Cæsar his chance, etc.*

At last the long-looked-for spring appeared. . . and we gladly gave up . . winter amusements for our out-of-door sports. Again we glide in our swift shells . . . again we play ball . . . and take long evening strolls and sit by the open window, etc. †

School and college compositions and examination papers swarm with blunders like the above. The writers seem to look upon the historical present as an indispensable ingredient in all narration, something to be forced in when other resources fail. They are evidently not aware that it is an ingenious device, requiring the utmost tact.

The evil will be greatly diminished by the observance of a few practical rules.

1. The historical present presupposes a vivid imagination. Are you sure that you possess such an imagination? Are you really aglow over this particular passage, do you actually have a vision of the action and the actors? If you entertain the slightest doubt on these points, refrain from the present and keep to the soberer and safer preterite.

2. Do not mix up preterite and present in the same

*Genung, Practical Rhetoric, p. 113.

†A. S. Hill, Foundations of Rhetoric, p. 97.

paragraph. A good illustration of the observance of the rule is the extract from The Outlook, § 3.

3. Introduce and dismiss the historical present with some words of explanation. Dickens, who is much given to the device, is usually careful to mark the transitions. Thus, in giving a generalized narrative (see § 34) of David's life soon after the mother's second marriage, he begins: *

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.

I come into the second-best parlor after breakfast. . . . My mother is ready for me at her writing desk, etc.

And so on for two pages, all in the present tense. Then the end is marked:

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies generally took this course, etc.-DICKENS: David Copperfield, i. ch. iv.

The whole ceremony of David's wedding with Dora (ii. ch. xv.), is narrated in the present; it is in form a retrospective vision.

Another writer much given to the device is Carlyle. His French Revolution is especially characterized by it. For most readers it is overdone, creating the impression of a mere vision rather than of sober historic actuality. The following extract, from Carlyle's article on Doctor Francia, is a sample of his more moderate style; it is a description of an army-march across the Andes:

Wayworn sentries with difficulty keep themselves awake; tired mules chew barley rations or doze on three legs; the feeble watch-fire will hardly kindle a cigar; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter down; and all snore steadily, begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the Constellations in that manner.

With this compare the extract from Homer, § 44. The final clause, in that manner, exemplifies Carlyle's fondness for loose sentence-structure, § 92.

* Quoted in Genung's Practical Rhetoric, p. 113.

CHAPTER XI.

PROPRIETY.

By Propriety of expression is here meant the avoidance. of whatever might offend a reader of cultivated taste. Under this general heading are two sections: Purity, or the avoidance of incorrect words and phrases; Euphony, or the avoidance of what is harsh to the ear.

PURITY.

98. The vocabulary of every language contains certain expressions which are not admissible in good writing. Some of them are positively bad; others are merely under suspicion, not being fully recognized by literary authorities. The young writer should avoid both classes.

English, to be standard, should have three properties. It should be national, present, reputable; national, as opposed to local or provincial; present, as opposed to obsolete; reputable, as opposed to newly-coined or vulgar.

National.-In England there are certain local modes of speech, an inheritance from the remote past, which are called dialects. Thus, there is the Yorkshire dialect, the Lincolnshire dialect, etc. But the local differences of English speech in the United States, although recognizable, do not quite constitute dialects in the strict philological sense of that term. Perhaps they may be called provincialisms. But, under whatever name, these local peculiarities are to be avoided in writing.* It is not good

* There can be no objection, of course, to such compositions as Lowell's Biglow Papers, the stories by Charles Egbert Craddock, Uncle Remus, and the like, compositions which profess to reproduce the speech of a certain district.

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expression to say: he conducted well, for he conducted himself well; or powerful tired, for very tired. At times there is difficulty in deciding what is a provincialism. Thus, in the United States, of the two words bucket and pail, one is favored in the West, the other in the East. Both words are old, being found in the language before the Norman Conquest, and both are used in literature. Neither one is likely to become obsolete as long as The Old Oaken Bucket and Jack and Gill are known to boys and girls.

In England, by reason of the literary ascendency of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, it is not difficult to draw the line between national and dialectic. The speech of the educated classes in the capital and in the two university towns is the national speech. In the United States, where there is less centralization and greater commercial and political rivalry, we must be less confident. Nevertheless, we can scarcely err in accepting as standard the diction of that long line of noted writers which began with Irving and ended with Holmes.

Between England and the United States there is a difference of vocabulary. In England an elevator is called a lift; a railroad is a railway; the rails themselves are called metals; the cars are carriages; the ticket-office is the bookingoffice; the train is not switched but shunted; baggage is called luggage; our baggage-checks are not in use in England, but the English name for them is brasses; the engineer of a train is the engine-driver, and the fireman is the stoker. A store is usually called a shop; twenty-five is usually five-andtwenty. Instead of betting, an Englishman usually lays a guinea, a shilling, etc.

In these and hundreds of similar divergences of vocabulary it would be pedantry or Anglomania to urge Americans to substitute the foreign term for the native. The latter has become sanctioned through long use, literary, legal, and commercial. Only one word of the above seems to call for the change, viz. engineer. Such a designation