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BY

ALFRED H. WELSH, M.A.

(OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY)

AUTHOR OF DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE,
ENGLISH MASTERPIECE COURSE, ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH,

LESSONS IN English GRAMMAR, FIRST LESSONS

IN ENGLISH.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed, and argument put in order.—
JEREMY COLLIER

For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches
most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not
content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on
which they grew.— BURKE

SIXTH EDITION.

SILVER, BURDETT & CO., PUBLISHERS,

NEW YORK... BOSTON . . . CHICAGO.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
047*172

COPYRIGHT, 1885

BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY

PRESS OF

KNIGHT & LEONARD

CHICAGO

DEDICATED

ΤΟ

GOVERNOR CHARLES FOSTER

There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.-COWLEY

PREFACE.

HAVING considered in his former work, Essentials

of English, what may be called the mechanics of language, the author hopes in the present volume to have made an acceptable contribution to Rhetoric proper, regarded as the art of employing words in the most efficient way to instruct, to please, to convince, or to persuade.

The aim has been not merely to exercise the student in composition, but to familiarize him with the qualities of literature, to provide him with the nomenclature of criticism and with a directory of style; to acquaint him with the modes of inventing, distributing, and enforcing matter; to get him into the habit of canvassing a subject, of reading upon it reflectively, of investigating it systematically, of extracting essential facts and setting them. forth effectively; for 'it is with language as with a violin,' says Vinet, we must learn to play it. One does not come into the world with skill to handle the bow.'

A small minority will write, almost all will read; and, while rhetorical study possesses a high value as a means of cultivating reflective habits and of refining the writer's style by indicating illustratively the excellencies that are to be followed and the faults that are to be eschewed, its great end is to increase the reader's power by affording a way toward a better discernment of the beauties in

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