tempered suggestion. It should not promise more than the work will perform; it is unwisely chosen if it reveals too much of the coming thought, or as the phrase is "gives the plot away." On account of this, multitudes of titles consist merely of proper names, or of some locution whose implication is remote; yet even these are chosen with much study of the sounds and natural associations of words.

EXAMPLES. -I. An interesting example of the study given to the name that should have just the accurate shade of association is described by Sir Walter Scott in the introductory chapter to Waverley. He contrasts it with chivalrous names, such as Howard, Mordaunt, Mortimer, Stanley; with sentimental names, such as Belmour, Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave; then goes on to say, "I have, therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for my hero, WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter be pleased to affix to it."

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2. Sometimes, as in the case just given, the first title says or intimates so little that a supplementary title, somewhat more explanatory, is necessary. In this introduction to Waverley the writer continues his discussion of his title by saying why, instead of "Waverley, a Tale of Other Days," or Waverley, a Romance from the German," or "Waverley, a Tale of the Times," he chose Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since. Sometimes the supplementary title is necessary to fix and elucidate the suggestion of the first title. Jevons's Principles of Science might be misleading or blind without the addition, A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method; so also The Unseen Universe needs the supplement given to it, Or Physical Speculations on a Future State.

3. This modest kind of title may nevertheless get at a form of the main idea. The essay whose theme is quoted on p. 423, for instance, though on the subject The Writing of History, presents only the non-committal title The Truth of the Matter; but how vitally close to the central thought this is, after all, may be seen from the following sentence at the outset: "To tell the truth simply, openly, without reservation, is the unimpeachable first principle of all right dealing; and historians have no license to be quit of it," and the following summary at the end: "It is thus and only thus we shall have the truth of the matter: by art, by the most difficult of all arts."

II. THE MAIN IDEAS.

By the process of determining the theme the subject-matter has been reduced to a working-idea; it is concentrated, and turned in a certain specific direction. Not yet is it analyzed; not yet are its parts coördinated and distributed. This belongs to the next stage of procedure, the making of the plan; which, as the heading here intimates, is the finding and placing of the main ideas.

It is well to bear in mind here that what we are now contemplating is only a framework, and that there are minor ideas, ideas that give the rounding, the life, the color, yet to come. For any determination of main ideas that we make is subject to revision in the light of amplification; changes in wording, in order, in manner of approach, are likely to suggest themselves in the greater glow of final composition. None the less the plan, the cold-blooded order laid down beforehand, is an invaluable guide as giving the logical mind the general control; and this is its purpose: to guide and keep within bounds, but not to enslave.

I.

The Making of the Plan. To begin with, the plan of a work must be made, and with slow unsatisfactory painstaking; it cannot be trusted to make itself. Many young writers, many fluent writers, mistake here, and think the glow of interest in their subject will make its own plan; an idea which for a while their awkward attempts at planning will only seem to confirm. But in truth this learning to plan is the practical way of training the mind into the habit of seeking order1; and when the habit is fully formed, the act of planning, which at the beginning seemed arbitrary and mechanical, will resolve itself into

1 See above, p. 404.

the discovery of the natural movement of a thought. Planning must begin awkwardly. It is well for the writer if he sticks to the work until he is at home in it. He may have to work through a period more or less wooden; he may be tempted to odd or fanciful structures of thought; he may at some stage be bitten with the craving for mere ingenuity, strange if he is not. But gradually he will reach a point where with every subject the vision of a plan will rise before him; he will come to see it not vaguely but as an articulated whole; and by and by he can surrender himself to the natural working of his mind, because the artistic, the finely logical, has become nature. When this point is reached, the process of planning, which to begin with was a separate thing carried on painfully beforehand, may be united with the final work of composition, the thought growing in a proportioned and self-justifying way as guided by an orderly moving mind.

The Skeleton Outline. This, a list of the main thoughts drawn up in tabular form, and with the divisions so expressed and numbered that their relation to the theme and to each other is clearly determined, is made first of all for the writer's sake; but also as a framework, however covered up and disguised, it is no less necessary to the reader, as giving distinction, balance, and progress to the several stages of the argument.

Writers should, especially at the beginning of their art, devote much care to drawing up their plans in skeleton outline. All the time devoted to it is in the long run both time and power gained. When the divisions and subdivisions are thus displayed in condensed form, they can be revised and rearranged; gaps in the thought can be detected and filled; obscure and elusive lines of thought can be brought to light and to book; the whole chain of thought can be made continuous and symmetrical. This is the practical object in making the skeleton.

As to the manner of tabulating thoughts, no rules but merely a few practical suggestions may be given.

1. Work for simplicity, - that is, make the main divisions and their subdivisions as few, and at the same time as weighty, as the subject will bear. To attain this object is worth many recasts of the plan.

NOTE. The old-fashioned sermon custom of making a large number of propositions, with their portentous numberings of twelfthly and thirteenthly, is now discarded; not because it is uncouth but because it makes too great demands on the reader's or hearer's thinking powers, and because it spreads out the thought too minutely. Two or three main stages of the thought, well supported and articulated, are enough for an ordinary essay

or sermon.

adopted in the tabulation.

2. A distinct form of notation for each rank of the thought, division or subdivision, also a like margin, should be In this way the relative distances from the central thought, and the parallelisms with each other, may be kept clear.

NOTE.-A large variety of letters, numerals, and ways of expression may become necessary in articulating a complex or extended plan, as, for instance, the plan of this book. These need not be recounted.

In an ordinary essay the most common and lucid notation, perhaps, is to put the main divisions in Roman numerals (I, II, III); the subdivisions in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3); and the sub-subdivisions in letters of the alphabet (a, b, c). Further than these three ranks of thought it is not ordinarily necessary to push the outline in a work of the limited range of the essay.

3. The introduction and the conclusion, as they relate not to the individual stages of the thought but to the whole work, should not be numbered in the series of divisions. To do so gives them a false coördination.

NOTE. The numbering begins with the body of the work, to which presumably the introduction supplies the briefest and directest possible approach. When the introduction is in more than one stage its subdivisions may, of course, be marked; preferably by some notation of its

own, or by the notation used for subdivision, as small letters of the alphabet.

4. A single subordinated thought need not be marked by a numeral or letter; it is only when there is more than one division that the mark of distinction has significance, or indeed that there is division at all.

NOTE. When we number a heading I we imply that there is a 2 and perhaps more numbers to set over against it; else there is no series, no advance from thought to related thought.

Landmarks of Structure in the Completed Work. How far the skeleton plan should be visible in the completed work is a point to be determined partly by the nature of the thought, and partly by the manner of presentation.

Thus the more abstruse the thought is, and the more it taxes the mind, the greater should be the care that all its linkings and sequences should be made obvious by the use of numerals and other such means. It is in recognition of this that thought moving in a logical order, as an argument or exposition, has to show more of its bony structure than thought moving in a chronological order, like a narrative. As to manner of presentation, spoken discourse has to be more scrupulous than written to keep its plan in evidence, because it has to be gathered from a single hearing. The much-parodied "fourthly" and "finally my brethren" of oldfashioned sermons, clumsy though it may be, is a sound recognition of the requirements of oral presentation.1

1 Of the sermon plan, which may be regarded as fairly typical of the plan of discourse in general, Dr. Burton says: "The question is sometimes raised, how plainly a preacher had better show to his congregation the skeleton in his sermons. I should say, as a rule, just about as plainly as he shows his own skeleton. If there should ever come up a serious doubt among a people whether their minister has any skeleton, he had better show one. A purely unformulated and gelatinous physique in a public man were disagreeable, and fitted to give his congregation a painful sense of insecurity.. Perhaps preachers do well to show their skeletons often enough to create a general feeling that they always have them. In some instances it may be desirable, for some reason, that the people carry away the sermon in a form to report