CHAPTER XI.

THE PARAGRAPH.

As in the sentence we reach the first complete organic product of thinking,1 so in the paragraph we first attain the range and finish of a whole composition; in one case, indeed, that of the editorial paragraph, it ranks definitely as an independent literary form. As such, and as obeying the essential procedure of every full discourse, it is the unit of invention, as the sentence is the unit of style. Because, however, the internal articulations and proportions, though clearly traceable, are still on a small scale, still somewhat embryonic, the paragraph is better studied as a stage of style than as a beginning of invention.

Definition. ·A paragraph is a connected series of sentences constituting the development of a single topic.

NOTE. - Mechanically, a paragraph is distinguished, both in print and manuscript, by beginning on a new line, and by indenting, that is, withdrawing the opening word an em's width toward the middle.

In recording conversation between different persons, the form of a new paragraph is given to what each interlocutor says, irrespective of the amount or nature of the matter included. This, unless constructed to a topic, is hardly to be called a paragraph; it is a thing in paragraph's clothing.

In this definition are implied the qualities that should govern a paragraph: unity, because it is concerned with a single topic; continuity, because it is a connected series of sentences; and proportion, because it is an orderly, systematic

1 See above, p. 311.

development. All the stages and details of construction must keep the integrity of these qualities in view.

How Long a Paragraph should be. A subordinate question this, but by no means idle or unimportant. For it is not mechanical alone; it is a question how to use rightly both the instinctive impressions and the interpreting powers of the reader. And as is true in so many other cases, it is answered by a judicious compromise between the too-long and the too-short.

On the one hand, in keeping the paragraph from running on too long, due regard should be had for the appearance of the page. Every reader can recall how often he has been repelled from a book by the mere fact that whole solid pages occur without paragraph breaks; and how often he has yielded to the attraction of an open, easy looking page. To write with this instinctive feeling of the reader in mind is not to humor a whim; rather it is a practical though indirect way of trying to get the cumbrous and lumbering tendency out of one's thought and bring it vigorously to its point. It is therefore a dictate both of good looks and good workmanship to avoid paragraphs of more than a page in length; and frequent relief of long paragraphs by shorter ones is a great help to readableness.

On the other hand, it must be recognized that too short a paragraph lacks weight and articulation. Ordinarily as many as three or more sentences are requisite to give mass enough to develop a topic satisfactorily.1 Less than that number is apt, while it gives a Frenchy, snippy effect to the style, to leave the topic too superficially treated.

NOTE. Professor Earle's idea of the smallest scale on which a built paragraph is practicable, with his example, may here be quoted. "The

1 This refers, of course, to the paragraph that not only proposes but develops a topic. The short transitional or preliminary paragraph, to be noticed later (p. 381), is an exception more apparent than real.

term paragraph can hardly be applied to anything short of three sentences. We sometimes see a satisfying result from three sentences, something which is felt to be a kind of whole; whole at least as a distinct member of larger discourse. The following is a fair example.

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'The first impulse of man is to seek for enjoyment. He lives with more or less impetuosity, more or less irregularity, to conquer for himself a home and blessedness of a mere earthly kind. Not till later (in how many cases never) does he ascertain that on earth there is no such home: that his true home lies beyond the world of sense, is a celestial home." "1

This quoted paragraph not only illustrates the point made, but will serve as a good brief model to get into the student's mind the typical movement of a paragraph structure.

I. THE PARAGRAPH IN SUM.

Dealing as it does with a topic, the paragraph sums up to a unity; the total effect and impression left upon the reader's mind is of a distinct, bounded, and, within its limits, complete subject. In this respect it has the roundedness, the beginning, body, and end, of an independent discourse. But as it is merely a stage in the unfolding of a larger subject, and as it represents that stage not in outline but in finished treatment, we do not reduce its topic to the sharp precision of a formal proposition. The topic sentence may, like the other sentences, be elaborated in structure and style, or be expressed in figurative language, or be a merely hinted statement. Too many are deceived by this fact into thinking that a paragraph may be trusted to make itself, with no special thought of a controlling topic. This is a fatal mistake. However disguised or diffused, the topic, the unitary result, is there, and must therefore be first proposed in the writer's mind; so that as a total effect the paragraph may be reducible to a single sentence.2

1 EARLE, English Prose, p. 212. The quotation from Carlyle.

2 "A paragraph has unity when you can state its substance in a single sentence; otherwise it is very apt to lack it."— WENDELL, English Composition, p. 124. — A student of biology thus puts it: "It is necessary to determine the axillary idea of the paragraph, about which the ancillary ideas may be grouped."

NOTE.It is in the flexible yet scientifically ordered paragraph, the thinking of a mass of thought at once to nucleus and lucid organism, that the writing of modern prose achieves perhaps its greatest triumph as an art.1

This easy informal texture of the paragraph makes it necessary here to dwell with some discrimination on the topic. The Topic: its Prominence. In all cases the topic should so control every part of the structure as to be a clearly apprehended resultant or sum of the whole. Different kinds of subject-matter, however, may cause this to be apprehended in different ways: it may be definitely pointed out, in so many words; or it may be left for the reader to gather and mentally realize as the total effect.

1. In matter of the argumentative or expository kind, wherein much depends on a defined centre and dependency of thought, the topic of a paragraph is expressed, either as a proposed subject of treatment, or as an informal proposition, so that the reader can coöperate with the writer in discovering the steps of explication or reasoning.

EXAMPLE. In the following the opening sentence, culminating in the two beacon words at the end, will be at once accepted by any reader as the controlling topic: —

"Great and various as the powers of Bacon were, he owes his wide and durable fame chiefly to this, that all those powers received their direction from common sense. His love of the vulgar useful, his strong sympathy with the popular notions of good and evil, and the openness with which he avowed that sympathy, are the secret of his influence. There was in his system no cant, no illusion. He had no anointing for broken bones, no fine theories de finibus, no arguments to persuade men out of their senses.

1 "The triumph of modern Art in Writing is manifested in the structure of the Paragraph. The glory of Latin composition must be looked for in the great sentence which occasionally recurs; the glory of French or English composition lies in the subtle combination of sentences which makes the Paragraph. The secret of Macaulay's charm lies, not, as has been imagined, in his pointed antithesis, or in his balanced periods (for these, if they have their attraction, have also undoubtedly their elements of repulsion), but in his masterly command of the Paragraph.” — EARLE, English Prose, p. 91.

He knew that men, and philosophers as well as other men, do actually love life, health, comfort, honor, security, the society of friends, and do actually dislike death, sickness, pain, poverty, disgrace, danger, separation from those to whom they are attached. He knew that religion, though it often regulates and moderates these feelings, seldom eradicates them; nor did he think it desirable for mankind that, they should be eradicated. The plan of eradicating them by conceits like those of Seneca, or syllogisms like those of Chrysippus, was too preposterous to be for a moment entertained by a mind like his. He did not understand what wisdom there could be in changing names where it was impossible to change things; in denying that blindness, hunger, the gout, the rack, were evils, and calling them άложρоýμεva; in refusing to acknowledge that health, safety, plenty, were good things, and dubbing them by the name of ådɩápopa. In his opinions on all these subjects, he was not a Stoic, nor an Epicurean, nor an Academic, but what would have been called by Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics a mere idiúrns, a mere common man. And it was precisely because he was so that his name makes so great an era in the history of the world. It was because he dug deep that he was able to pile high. It was because, in order to lay his foundations, he went down into those parts of human nature which lie low, but which are not liable to change, that the fabric which he reared has risen to so stately an elevation, and stands with such immovable strength."1

2. In matter of the descriptive or narrative kind, or in any accumulation of concrete details grouped merely in space or time, the topic may be left unexpressed in words, diffused as it were through the whole, and to be felt by the reader as he thinks himself into the limits of the scene.2

EXAMPLE. - In the following the topic, which after we have read the paragraph we perceive to be “ Hester Prynne on her way to the pillory,” is nowhere expressed; we simply sum it up from the circumstances of time, place, and event:

"A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of sternbrowed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards

1 MACAULAY, Essay on Lord Bacon, Essays, Vol. iii, p. 463.

2 This discrimination of subject-matter as bearing on the topic is, it will be noted, merely an extension to the scale of the paragraph of the same discrimination already applied to clauses within the sentences, and their claim to unity; see above, pp. 323, 324.