Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

PART FOUR

TYPES OF COMPOSITION

76. The types of composition discussed in detail here are five: essay, speech, debate, story, versification. They all make use of the processes of composition but not all to the same extent.

CHAPTER XII

ESSAY

77. An essay is a composition restricted in length and not exhaustive of its subject.

The term "essay" is used with considerable latitude, but limited length and limited treatment seem to be elements common to all essays. A composition which purports to give a full and final discussion of its subject may be modestly styled an essay, but it is more properly a dissertation or treatise.

I. Formal Essay

78. The formal essay keeps strictly to its topic, is serious and impersonal in tone, has often regular divisions and an evident order, and usually proves and enforces a definite proposition.

The style of the formal essay is exemplified in passages quoted from Macaulay, De Quincey, Faber, Arnold, Newman.

79. For clearness begin at once with the topic; define and explain your view in contrast with other views; follow an order and outline.

Our feeling towards Mr. Hastings is not exactly that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813.

MACAULAY: Warren Hastings.

80. If persuasion is intended, remove at first any prejudice against your opinion and then after explanation and proof urge your view with apt means of force.

For interest show that your subject is important or useful and that you are handling it in a fresh and novel way.

Our opinion then is this, that Barère approached nearer than any person mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consummate and universal depravity.

MACAULAY: Barère.

Note how the comparisons of Macaulay are not trite either in substance or form. He avoids the methodical "just as," "so." The following are but a few from his essay on Barère.

He could no more stand up, erect and self-supported, in any cause, than the ivy can rear itself like the oak, or the wild vine shoot to heaven like the cedar of Lebanon.

A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barère may be said not to know what it is to lie.

It would be as unreasonable to expect him to remember all the wretches whom he slew as all the pinches of snuff that he took.

The real navigator is formed on the waves; the real surgeon is formed at bedsides, and the conflicts of free states are the real school of constitutional statesmen.

81. The editorial is an essay brief in form and handling a topic of the day. It has more persuasion than the ordinary essay, but it does not adopt the vehement force of a speech.

82. The chria is a methodical composition, which contains an introduction of the topic, its explanation, its proof, its illustration by contrast with an opposite subject or by comparison with its like, its exemplification by historical instances, its confirmation by testimony, and finally an enforcement of the topic.

The chria is a device for drill in composition. It is artificial, yet it follows a reasonable and quite natural handling of the topic. Many essays and even paragraphs, though wanting the eight divisions in a fixed order, have introduction, explanation, and proof followed by illustration and enforcement. The following passage from Matthew Arnold has many of the divisions of a chria. See also Leigh Hunt's Deaths of Little Children.

(Introduction.) In spite of all the shocks which the feelings of a good Catholic have in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion may he see if he has his eyes open! I will tell him of one of them. (Topic.) Let him go in London to that delightful spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, the region where its theological books are placed. I am almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr. Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the library to the flames.

(Explanation.) He will find an immense Catholic work, the collection of the Abbé Migne, lording it over that whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble Protestant forces which hang upon its skirts.

(Contrast.) Protestantism is duly represented, indeed: the librarian knows his business too well to suffer it to be otherwise. All the varieties of Protestantism are there. There is the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exemplary, but a little uninteresting; there are the works of Calvin, rigid, militant, menacing; there the works of Dr. Chalmers, the Scotch thistle valiantly doing duty as the rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about it all the time; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the last word of religious philosophy in a land where every one has some culture, and where superiorities are discountenanced, the flower of moral and intelligent mediocrity.

(Proof.) But how are all these divided against one another, and how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by the Catholic Leviathan, their neighbor! Majestic in its blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after shelf and compartment after compartment, its right mounting up into heaven among the white folios of the "Acta Sanctorum," its left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of the "Law Digest." Everything is there, in that immense "Patrologiae Cursus Completus," in that "Encyclopédie Théologique," that "Nouvelle Encyclopédie Théologique," that "Troisième Encyclopédie Théologique"; religion, philosophy, history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip.

(Resemblance.) The work embraces the whole range of human interests; like one of the great Middle-Age cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land, bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, Wide-embracing as

so that it be but matter of human concern.

eminently the Church; not, perhaps, the Church of the future, but the power whose product it is! a power, for history at any rate, indisputably the Church of the past, and, in the past, the Church

of the multitude.

nay,

(Conclusion.) This is why the man of imagination, and the philosopher too, will always have a weakness for the Catholic Church; because of the rich treasures of human life which have been stored within her pale. The mention of other religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once calls up in our minds the thought of man of a definite type as their adherents; the mention of Catholicism suggests no such special following. Anglicanism suggests the English episcopate; Calvin's name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers', the Duke of Argyll; Channing's, Boston society; but Catholicism suggests, - what shall I say?-all the pellmell of the men and women of Shakespeare's plays. This abundance the Abbé Migne's collection faithfully reflects.

[ocr errors]

ARNOLD: Essays in Criticism.

Models

83. Good examples of editorials can be readily found, especially in the weekly magazines and papers. The following paragraphs will serve as models for editorials and essay paragraphs. See also various passages under Exposition and Argumentation.

Can

1. England, surely, is the paradise of little men, and the purgatory of great ones. May I never be a Minister of State or a FieldMarshal! I'd be an individual, self-respecting Briton, in my own private castle, with the Times to see the world by, and pen and paper to scribble off withal to some public print, and set the world right. Public men are only my employes; I use them as I think fit, and turn them off without warning. Aberdeen, Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, Newcastle, what are they muttering about services and ingratitude? were they not paid? hadn't they their regular quarter-day? Raglan, Burgoyne, Dundas, I cannot recollect all the fellows' names, can they merit aught? they be profitable to me, their lord and master? And so, having no tenderness or respect for their persons, their antecedents, or their age, not caring that in fact they are serving me with all their strength, not asking whether, if they manage ill, it be not, perchance, because they are in the fetters of Constitutional red tape, which have weighed on their hearts and deadened their energies, till the hazard of failure and the fear of censure have quenched the spirit of daring, I think it becoming and generous, during, not after their work, not when it is ended, but in the very agony of conflict, to institute a formal process of inquiry into their demerits, not secret, not indulgent to their sense of honor, but in the hearing of all Europe, and amid the scorn of the world,

« AnteriorContinuar »