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the discourse was written to say," but shall each " his "native bias." To each his own method, style, wit, eloquence." 1

"in each rank of fruits, as in each rank of masters, one is endowed with one virtue, and another with another; their glory is their dissimilarity, and they who propose to themselves in the training of an artist that he should unite the colouring of Tintoret, the finish of Albert Dürer, and the tenderness of Correggio, are no wiser than a norticulturist would be, who made it the object of his labour to produce a fruit which should unite in itself the lusciousness of the grape, the crispness of the nut, and the fragrance of the pine." 2

If Thackeray had published his "Roundabout Papers à little later, he might be supposed to have had Mr. Spencer's "perfectly-endowed man" in mind while writing the following paragraph: :

"And this, I must tell you, was to have been a rare Roundabout performance one of the very best that has ever appeared in this series. It was to have contained all the deep pathos of Addison; the logical precision of Rabelais; the childlike playfulness of Swift; the manly stoicism of Sterne; the metaphysical depth of Goldsmith; the blushing modesty of Fielding; the epigrammatic terseness of Walter Scott; the uproarious humour of Sam Richardson; and the gay simplicity of Sam Johnson; it was to have combined all these qualities, with some excellences of modern writers whom I could name: but circumstances have occurred which have rendered this Roundabout Essay also impossible."&

If Shakspere approaches Mr. Spencer's ideal, it is because he speaks through many voices; but even Shakspere, when he ceases to be Iago or Juliet, shows traces of "a specific style."

1 Emerson: Letters and Social Aims; Greatness.

2 Ruskin Modern Painters, vol. iii. part iv. chap. iii.

8 Thackeray Roundabout Papers; On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write.

The unity which every young writer should seek is not the unity of perfection, but the unity which comes from the conception of a discourse as a whole, and from the harmonious arrangement of the parts in conformity with that conception. Every composition that he writes should be "a body, not a mere collection of members,"1—a living body. Its life must come partly from the writer's natural qualities, and partly from his acquired resources whether of matter or of language. Familiarity with good authors will stimulate his powers of expression, and constant practice under judicious criticism will train them.

A writer

should interest

Whatever a writer's materials, whatever his gifts, he must, if he hopes to be read, awaken interest at the beginning and hold it to the end. Unless he suchis readers. ceeds in doing this, his work, whatever its merits in other respects, fails, as a picture fails which nobody cares to look at, or a sonata which nobody cares to hear. A student of composition can receive no higher praise from his teacher than this: "I enjoyed reading your essay."

1 Non solum composita oratio, sed etiam continua. -Quintilian Inst Orator. vii. x. xvii.

PART II.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

FOUR KINDS DISCRIMINATED.

THUS far we have discussed the general principles that apply in varying degrees to all kinds of composition: we have now to consider the special principles that apply to each kind.

The four kinds of composition that seem to require separate treatment are: DESCRIPTION, which deals with persons or things; NARRATION, which deals with acts or events; EXPOSITION, which deals with whatever admits of analysis or requires explanation; ARGUMENT, which deals with any material that may be used to convince the understanding or to affect the will. The purpose of description is to bring before the mind of the reader persons or things as they appear to the writer. The purpose of narration is to tell a story. The purpose of exposition is to make the matter in hand more definite. The purpose of argument is to influence opinion or action, or both.

In theory these kinds of composition are distinct, but in practice two or more of them are usually combined. Description readily runs into narration, and narration

into description: a paragraph may be descriptive in form and narrative in purpose, or narrative in form and descriptive in purpose. Exposition has much in common with one kind of description; and it may be of service to any kind of description, to narration, or to argument.

CHAPTER L

DESCRIPTION.

Language

with painting and sculpture.

THE purpose of DESCRIPTION is, as has already been said, to bring before the mind of the reader persons or things as they appear to the writer. As a means to this end, language has certain limits, limits compared that are obvious to one who compares a verbal description of an object either with the object itself or with a model, a photograph, or a drawing of it. In the model or the drawing, as in the object itself, we see the parts in themselves, and we see them in their relations with one another, we see them as a whole. Now, the only way in which words can give a complete idea of a whole is by a description of the parts. To make a whole these parts must be laboriously put together, and even then the part first spoken of may be forgotten before the last part is reached. The process, in the words of Coleridge, "seems to be like taking the pieces of a dissected map out of its box. We first look at one part and then at another, then join and dove-tail them; and when the successive acts of attention have been completed, there is a retrogressive effort of mind to behold it as a whole." 1 In consequence of this serious drawback to the use of words for purposes of descrip tion, diagrams are added to the text of a scientific treatise, ground-plans and elevations to the specifications of an

1 Coleridge: Biographia Literaria, chap. xxii.

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