twenties over every thousand years, fell too powerfully and too early the vision.of life."1"And if, in the vellum palimpsest, lying amongst the other diplomata of human archives or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which moves to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesque collisions of those successive themes, having no natural connection, which by pure accident have consecutively occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven-created palimpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain, there are not and cannot be such incoherencies."1 On the other hand, the number and intricacy of the suspensive details are a draft on the reader's interpreting power; the writer needs to watch them with this limitation in mind.2 The periodic type is the one least favorable to ease in reading. Further, being in its nature a somewhat ponderous, formal structure, it ought in general to be confined to subjectmatter that requires such dignity of expression, and applied to lighter subjects only as a touch of artificial finish will heighten their effect. This has to be determined by literary tact. NOTE. To apply the periodic style to everyday and domestic subjects is apt to have an effect of over-pompousness and bombast, as if one's common affairs were subjects of state. In the sentence beginning "Upon me," above, for instance, one feels that the "me" must be a rather important personage to merit so pompous a statement. The Loose Sentence. In the loose sentence the principle of suspension is not observed. Qualifying, explanatory, and alternative elements are added as they occur to the mind, after the ideas to which they belong, with no apparent attempt at studied grouping. The test of a loose sentence is, that it may be stopped before the end, and yet leave the part thus far given grammatically complete. The term loose conveys no disparaging connotation; it is merely a technical term for a structure just as legitimate and just as susceptible to artistic finish as the periodic. 1 DE QUINCEY, Suspiria de Profundis, Works, Vol. i, pp. 257, 233. EXAMPLES. Take the periodic sentence quoted on p. 285, above, and put the main assertion first, and the type becomes loose: "We came to our journey's end at last, with no small difficulty, after much fatigue, through deep roads and bad weather." - In the following the places are marked where the sentence might be stopped and yet remain grammatically complete: "He does not write from hearsay, | but from sight and experience; it is the scenes that he has lived and labored amidst, that he describes: | those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, | noble thoughts, and definite resolves; | and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent."1 The advantage of the loose sentence is that it is more like conversation than the periodic, and hence more easy, less formal. It is especially adapted, therefore, to the more familiar and everyday kinds of discourse, such as narrative, letter writing, and popular addresses; and to the ordinary topics of common life and fact. On the other hand, while a perfect loose sentence is as hard to make as a perfect period, the loose type is the one most naturally happened upon without effort, or when the sentence is left to make itself. The faults that beset this type are therefore the faults arising from slipshod thinking and careless workmanship; namely, rambling incoherence and dilution of the thought. NOTE. Just as the periodic makes more natural use of the evoluta type, with its internal subordination to a main assertion; so in the loose sentence the composita, with its coördinate clauses, figures most largely. The Balanced Sentence. The principle of the balanced sentence has been treated under Repetition of Construction, p. 308, above. When the repeated construction dominates the whole sentence, that is, when the sentence consists of two members similar in construction and setting off each other, it is said to be balanced. The answering construction is often 1 CARLYLE on Burns, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. i, p. 267. reënforced by antithesis; and sometimes it varies the distribution of emphasis by the employment of chiasmus. EXAMPLE.- — "He defended him when living, amidst the clamors of his enemies; and praised him when dead, amidst the silence of his friends." The antithetic words living, dead; clamors, silence; enemies, friends, make this balance very elaborate. The balanced structure is easy to interpret, and easy to remember, because the similarly ordered clauses lend distinction to each other, and make it easy to fix the points that are of most importance. This fact suggests what the balanced sentence is especially good for: to put into rememberable form, into a kind of aphorism, the occasional thought that comes out of surrounding material like a gist, or lesson, or summary. On the other hand, as it is the most artificial type of sentence, it is the most easily overdone; its rhetorical power, in fact, depends on the comparative rarity of its use. Being so artificial, too, it is apt to become enslaving and manneristic. From the craving for the familiar measure, there is a temptation to fill out the balance by tautological or forced assertions.1 EXAMPLE. The evil of attempting to make balance, with its aids of antithesis and alliteration, the staple of writing, is illustrated in the style called euphuism, which, though utterly unreadable now, had a prodigious vogue among the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth. The following few sentences will give a little taste of euphuistic style: "Therfore my good Euphues, for these doubts and dumpes of mine, either remoue the cause, or reueale it. Thou hast hetherto founde me a cheerefull companion in thy myrth, and nowe shalt thou finde me as carefull with thee in thy If altogether thou maist not be cured, yet maist thou bee comforted. If ther be any thing yat either by my friends may be procured, or by my life atteined, that may either heale thee in part, or helpe thee in all, I protest to thee by the name of a friend, that it shall rather be gotten with moane. 1 The same danger has been noticed, page 275, above, of antithesis, which, in fact, figures largely in balance. These two, to which may be added alliteration, are the rhetorical devices most liable to become a snare to the writer. the losse of my body, than lost by getting a kingdome. Thou hast tried me, therefore trust me: thou hast trusted me in many things, therfore try me in this one thing. I never yet failed, and now I wil not fainte. Be bolde to speake and blush not: thy sore is not so angry but I can salue it, the wound not so deepe but I can search it, thy griefe not so great but I can ease it. If it be ripe it shalbe lawnced, if it be broken it shalbe tainted, be it never so desperat it shalbe cured." 1 III. Combinations and Proportions.—The short and the long sentences of a passage, as we have seen, are related to each other, roughly speaking, somewhat as statement and detail, proposition and enlargement. The relations of periodic and loose sentences rise more out of the dynamic stress; the loose sentence, its stress-point attracted to the beginning, taking up the cue at the end of the period preceding. Thus the two types answer to and reënforce each other. As a matter of fact, however, the actual number of periodic sentences is much smaller than the number of loose sentences; and when we recognize the so-called periodic style we get its peculiar effect not from a predominance but from a moderate percentage of periodic sentences. 1. By the best writers periodic sentences are constantly relieved by loose ones; it would indeed be hard to find two rigid periods in succession, except in cases where the periodic order is accumulated for the iteration of structure. The requirements of the dynamic stress necessitate variation. NOTE. The following, with its three sentences all of varying types and lengths, derives a charm from this very diversity: "And then, in the deep stillness of the desert air — unbroken by falling stream, or note of bird, or tramp of beast, or cry of man came the whisper, of a voice as of a gentle breath of a voice so small that it was almost like silence. Then he knew that the moment was come. He drew, as was his wont, his rough mantle over his head; he wrapped his face in its ample folds; he came out from 1 Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, Arber's reprint, p. 65. the sheltering rock, and stood beneath the cave to receive the Divine communications." 1 2. Nor is it often that sentences are found conforming rigidly throughout to the periodic structure. The same sentence, especially if long, may follow the suspensive structure up to a certain point, and then be finished loose; this is a natural course, too, the loose addition building its detail on what the periodic has put into stress. EXAMPLE. The following sentence, strictly periodic as far as the word "opinion," goes on loose to enlarge on what the first part has yielded. “I think that in England, partly from the want of an Academy, partly from a national habit of intellect to which that want of an Academy is itself due, there exists too little of what I may call a public force of correct literary opinion, possessing within certain limits a clear sense of what is right and wrong, sound and unsound, and sharply recalling men of ability and learning from any flagrant misdirection of these their advantages." "2 1 STANLEY, History of the Jewish Church, Vol. ii, p. 341. 2 MATTHEW ARNOLD. |