touch of the chisel or the pencil it wielded, but has added to the knowledge and quickened the happiness of mankind."

3. The actual culmination of an impassioned discourse is not always, perhaps not ideally, at the very end. There is needed a kind of cadence, a letting down to earth from a sustained and lofty flight, a gentle provision for the revulsion that may follow in the hearer's mind. This need is the occasion of the cadence conclusion, a final passage in more quiet and subdued style, giving some thought related to the argument though not directly aimed at.

·Apart from this graduated ending, the conclusion as a whole has not the motive for restraint in style that has been noted of the introduction. It takes influence from the character of the discourse preceding it; and thus, if there is emotion or depth of thought to warrant, it may fittingly adopt imagery, rhythm, a somewhat more spacious and rolling sen

tence structure.

This is not inconsistent with its general character as a cadenced effect; it merely specifies a particular kind of cadence.

EXAMPLES. Of the heightened and eloquent conclusion, the quotation just given from Ruskin is an example. A long suspensive structure used as a conclusion may be seen in the quotation from Cardinal Newman, p. 284, above. A familiar classical example is the peroration of Webster's Reply to Hayne.

The closing paragraph of Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture is a good example of a cadence conclusion, with its subdued tone:

"I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have checked the course of what might otherwise have been importunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain, except that which is not made with hands. There is something ominous in the light which has enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar."1

1 RUSKIN, Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 388.

Transitions.

-A transition, as the name indicates, is a passage over from one division of the thought to another. It is an intermediate statement, in which is found something retained from what precedes, and something anticipatory of what follows. But in addition to this, it is essential that the transition be a distinct thought in itself, a statement worth making. To make the turn on a mere catch-word is merely to force thoughts together by arbitrary association.

EXAMPLE OF A CATCH-WORD TRANSITION. — In the following, from a student essay, the new stage of the thought is tacked on by the chance suggestion of a word:

"The people have now a much warmer interest in college base-ball games than even in the best professional league games.

"And that is what we must keep out of our college athletics, professionalism, which has crept into some of our sports, but which we must earnestly strive to abolish."

A transition is merely a form of explicit reference,1 made more marked and extended because the thoughts it connects have more important rank in the composition. The problem of transition - how to make one stage of thought pass naturally into the next-is always present in literary composition, and is especially to be satisfied between the main divisions. The most important transition of all occurs naturally between the introduction and the body of discussion; the next in importance, which however is much easier to effect, occurs between the discussion and the conclusion. In any case the aim is, while not impairing the perfect distinction of the connected thoughts, to give them a genuine, not forced or arbitrary, sequence.2

EXAMPLE OF TRANSITION THOUGHT.-Referring to the Illustrative Plan, p. 439, it will be seen that there is a gap between the introductory thought, as there expressed, and the subject of the first main heading. The introduction (see p. 453), portraying the ideal, has led up to this statement:

1 For which, see above, p. 370.

2 For these qualities, as necessary requisites, see above, p. 440.

"The thing is infinitely difficult. The skill and strategy of it cannot be taught." Then follows this transition thought: "And so historians take another way, which is easier: they tell part of the truth,— the part most to their taste, or most suitable to their talents, and obtain readers to their liking among those of similar tastes and talents to their own." Going on through an intermediate paragraph of amplification, in which are described some of the partial histories that deal with the kinds of truth they like and let the rest go, this transition thought leads finally to the inquiry: Is there no way in which all the truth may be made to hold together in a narrative so strongly knit and so harmoniously colored that no reader will have either the wish or the skill to tear its patterns asunder, and men will take it all, unmarred and as it stands, rather than miss the zest of it?" The answer to this is the first stage of the discussion, which (a negative stage) is opened by the sentence: "It is evident the thing cannot be done by the 'dispassionate' annalist."

III. THE AMPLIFYING IDEAS.

In the making of the plan, the course and movement of the thought have been charted out; the relations of the main ideas to the theme and to each other have been determined; but as yet these ideas have been expressed only as headings, and together they have formed only a skeleton, a bony structure. As the next and final stage of composition now, this bony structure must be clothed with the rounded fulness of life; the core ideas must take to themselves a fitting body of explanatory, illustrative, and vivifying thought. To supply this, with all the finishing touches necessary to make the composition complete, is the work of amplification; a process in which invention and style are equally concerned, being their final meeting-ground.

Amplification is often regarded with suspicion, as if it were merely spreading the thought out thin, or putting in what is called "padding"; and no advice about writing is more popular than the advice to "boil it down." This suspicion is

directed, however, only to the abuse of amplification, which

may be easy and great; but rightly managed amplification is simply the most vital and necessary process in all composition, it is in fact the summit of composition itself, approached from the inventive side.1

The Glow of Composition. As we enter upon the study of this final stage of the work, we need to take practical note of the fact that amplification is a more fervid process than planning. The writer is in a more exalted mood. From a mood of severe discriminating thought, whose task it was to gather, weigh, and distribute ideas so as to satisfy the logical sense, he has passed, so to say, into an ardor of thinking, wherein the spirit of the work is acting; he is living through something of the vigor, the clear vision, the emotion, that he is trying to awaken in his reader. Thought and thinking - both these enter into the work; and it is important to use the energy of the latter for what it is worth.

For this glow of composition sharpens his faculties and gives him clearer insight into all his work. It reacts also on the plan that he has made. New wordings are suggested, new distinctions and points of effect, and not infrequently changes of order. This does not mean that the plan has become useless; too many think it does and throw away the plan here; it simply means that the course of thought has become a more vital thing, more self-justifying and natural. It suggests also that plan-making is not something to be done once for all and closed; rather, the plan should be kept open and flexible, to gain all it may from the quickened mood of composition. A useful maxim to bear in mind is, Do not be the slave of your own prearranged plan of discourse.2

1 "Amplification, I say, which in strict definition is not making a few thoughts go a long way, by powerful inflation, but clothing your outlined [discourse] in a fullrounded corporeity of actual, ponderable thoughts, all of them relational, of course, to that outline with its first, second, third and fourth, of main thoughts." — BURTON, Yale Lectures, p. 59.

2 This conclusion has been anticipated above, p. 432.

Of amplification, it is the business of the present section, after first glancing at its opposite, to discuss its objects, its means, and its accessories.

I.

The Province of Unamplified Expression. It is to be conceded that not all enunciations of thought need amplification. There are cases where the most condensed and pointed expression is to be devised as final and best, — where any enlargement or elucidation is apt to result in weakening and dilution.1 Such cases a sound literary instinct will recognize.

2

For this reason, along with the ability to amplify, the writer should no less diligently cultivate the exact opposite -the ability to compress thought into the telling and pregnant form of aphorism. An aphorism is not merely a short sentence. It is a short sentence crowded so full of thought that it overflows. For its end of sententiousness it may be somewhat sweeping, one-sided, paradoxical; still, when the reader has thought beyond its bounds, as its art of putting things makes him do, it corrects itself. To write aphoristically is a native gift, largely, but it may also be worked for and developed. And its value is that it not only promotes the habit of thinking much in little compass; it enables one better to fix his landmarks of thought, its cardinal and its

1 From the side of style this liability has been touched upon under Condensation for Vigor, p. 295, above.

2 "Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of sciences; for discourse of illustration is cut off; recitals of examples are cut off; discourse of connexion and order is cut off; descriptions of practice are cut off. So there remaineth nothing to fill the Aphorisms but some good quantity of observation: and therefore no man can suffice, nor in reason will attempt, to write Aphorisms, but he that is sound and grounded.” — BACON, Advancement of Learning, Book ii, p. 172.

8 "The very essence of an aphorism is that slight exaggeration which makes it more biting while less rigidly accurate.". STEPHEN, Hours in a Library, Vol. ii,

p. 3. — The danger to be guarded against in such writing is spoken of, p. 276, above.

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