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If, as stated above,' the total effect of a paragraph should be reducible to a single sentence, conversely the expansion of a single sentence, with due observance of the legitimate dependencies of clause and clause, may be taken as the pattern of paragraph structure. The same relations exist between sentences in the paragraph as between clauses in the sentence3; only in the paragraph, as befits its ampler scale, the relations are more strongly marked, and grouped with greater sense of sequence and climax. In this respect the plan of the paragraph is intermediate between that of the sentence and that of the whole composition. Generally speaking, then, any sentence, to be worthy of a place in the plan, should contribute directly to explain, or particularize, or prove, or apply the thought of the topic.

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Nor should these functions be mixed at hap-hazard. sense of sequence and climax just mentioned dictates that they rise out of each other in a logical growth, and be graduated from a natural outset to a natural finish. The following table, in which the interior organism of the paragraph is set forth in three main stages, may be taken as a comprehensive scheme of structure.

The topic, expressed or hinted.

I. Whatever is needed to define the topic.

Taking the form of

Repetition,
Obverse, or
Explication.

1 See above, p. 358.

2 "The principles which so plainly bring paragraphs and order out of chaos are the very same which, applied habitually and under different conditions, make the difference between good sentences and bad."-WENDELL, English Composition, p. 118.

8 What range these may cover has been specified above, pp. 323, 324.

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II. Whatever is needed to establish the topic.

Taking the form of

Example,

Illustration,

Detail (particularization), or

Proof.

III. Whatever is needed to apply the topic.

Taking the form of

Summary,

Consequence, or

Enforcement.

Of course no single paragraph could follow all these subdivisions without being unwieldy; they are presented in this relative order merely to show the place they occupy with reference to a rounded scheme. When expressed, this is their typical order and relation. A like thing may be said of the main stages themselves. These may be proportioned in a great variety of ways; some one of them generally taking the predominance, in bulk and specialization, the others condensed or even wholly elided. It is on this freedom of variation and proportion that the flexibility, the individual character, of a paragraph depends. All the while, however, the type exists, a kind of steadying-point in the writer's mind, to keep the lines of treatment from becoming lawless and unbalanced.

The claims of length, too, have an important application here. Rightly to define, or establish, or apply, or even state a topic may require so much space that only the section of the scheme that deals with this can be given within reasonable paragraph limits; the other sections being left in turn to their place, and disposed of according to their importance. It is this fact, largely, which gives rise to the various kinds

of paragraphs, to be noticed later1; it has also a bearing on the plan of composition as a whole.2

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EXAMPLES. Two examples, given here, may illustrate respectively how a paragraph may fairly round out the type, or may confine itself to some section of it. Of so varied a subject not more than these illustrations can well be undertaken.

1. A paragraph in which the three stages are all more or less fully represented. It is about Oliver Cromwell:—

"No sovereign ever carried to the throne so large a portion of the best qualities of the middling orders, so strong a sympathy with the feelings and interests of his people. He was sometimes driven to arbitrary measures; but he had a high, stout, honest, English heart. Hence it was that he loved to surround his throne with such men as Hale and Blake. Hence it was that he allowed so large a share of political liberty to his subjects, and that, even when an opposition dangerous to his power and to his person almost compelled him to govern by the sword, he was still anxious to leave a germ from which, at a more favorable season, free institutions might spring. We firmly believe that, if his first Parliament had not commenced its debates by disputing his title, his government would have been as mild at home as it was energetic and able abroad. He was a soldier; he had risen by war. Had his ambition been of an impure or selfish kind, it would have been easy for him to plunge his country into continental hostilities on a large scale, and to dazzle the restless factions which he ruled, by the splendor of his victories. Some of his enemies have sneeringly remarked, that in the successes obtained under his administration he had no personal share; as if a man who had raised himself from obscurity to empire solely by his military talents could have any unworthy reason for shrinking from military enterprise. This reproach is his highest glory. In the success of the English navy he could have no

1 See below, p. 379.
2 See below, p. 441.

Topic proposed.

I. DEFINED by con-
crete repetition.
II. ESTABLISHEDby
examples, drawn
from his policy

at home

and abroad;

and from his magnanimity

in military

selfish interest. Its triumphs added nothing to his fame; its increase added nothing to his means of overawing his enemies; its great leader was not his friend. Yet he took a peculiar pleasure in encouraging that noble service which, of all the instruments employed by an English government, is the most impotent for mischief, and the most powerful for good. His administration was glorious, but with no vulgar glory. It was not one of those periods of overstrained and convulsive exertion which necessarily produce debility and languor. Its energy was natural, healthful, temperate. He placed England at the head of the Protestant interest, and in the first rank of Christian powers. He taught every nation

and in naval triumphs.

III. APPLIED by consequences in the prosperity of

the people

to value her friendship and to dread her enmity. But and of the govern

he did not squander her resources in a vain attempt to invest her with that supremacy which no power, in the modern system of Europe, can safely affect, or can long retain."1

ment.

2. A paragraph devoted entirely to the middle or establishing stage, by giving examples. The topic, which the previous paragraph has defined at considerable length, is the power which great writers have to shape the language and literature of succeeding ages:

"If there is any one who illustrates this remark, it is Gibbon; I seem to trace his vigorous condensation and peculiar rhythm at every turn in the literature of the present day. Pope, again, is said to have tuned our versification. Since his time, any one, who has an ear and turn for poetry, can with little pains throw off a copy of verses equal or superior to the poet's own, and with far less of study and patient correction than would have been demanded of the poet himself for their production. Compare the choruses of the Samson Agonistes with any stanza taken at random in Thalaba: how much had the language gained in the interval between them! Without denying the high merits of Southey's beautiful romance, we surely shall not be wrong in saying, that in its unembarrassed eloquent flow, it is the language of the nineteenth century that speaks, as much as the author himself." 2

In detailing this important topic, indeed, the author goes on to give further instances and citations for two paragraphs more, before, in a short concluding paragraph, he sums up.

1 MACAULAY, Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History, Essays, Vol. i, p. 509. 2 NEWMAN, Idea of a University, p. 323.

II.

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Relation of Parts to Each Other. In order to preserve continuity in a paragraph, something more than plan is needed. There is still to be considered that linking of sentence with sentence by which the plan itself, real and systematic as it is, affects the reader not as plan but as uninterrupted flow and current of thought. To this end there must be a traceable relation, a felt reference, of each sentence to its preceding, while in turn it leaves its assertion in position for the next sentence to take it up. This reference, equally palpable in either case, may be explicit or implicit.

Explicit Reference. This kind of reference between sentences is called explicit because there is some word or phrase whose definite function it is to make it, something which on account of this office we call a connective. Two kinds of con

nectives call here for notice.

1. Conjunctional, words or phrases. These, as has been demonstrated under the head of Conjunctional Relation,1 have to do with the direction of the thought, whether as turning it some new way, – adversative, illative, causal, or as confirming it in the direction in which it is already going.

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EXAMPLES. The following, in its copiousness of connective words, illustrates how much more scrupulous the older writers were than the moderns to mark the relations of sentences:

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'He kept a strait hand on his nobility, and chose rather to advance clergymen and lawyers, which were more obsequious to him, but had less interest in the people; which made for his absoluteness, but not for his safety. Insomuch as I am persuaded it was one of the causes of his troublesome reign. For that his nobles, though they were loyal and obedient, yet did not co-operate with him, but let every man go his own way. He was not afraid of an able man as Lewis the Eleventh was. But contrariwise he was served by the ablest men that then were to be found; without which his affairs could not have prospered as they did. . . . Neither did

1 See above, pp. 259–267.

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