saying, in trite fashion, Michelet is sober and coherent in his history, De Quincey says he is a craft linked to shore, a falcon drawn back to the falconer, a rocket returning from the clouds. Rarely will a writer have occasion to resort to so much novelty and variety, but it is good in practice to strive for unusual freshness and originality. Subjects Suggest original pictures for these trite expressions: He fell into a state of innocuous desuetude. He kept the even tenor of his pace. The book supplies a long-felt want. The cynosure of all eyes. 3. This was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool and silent pinewoods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in it, rang up from the riverside before the sun was down. In the growing dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves; from time to time a faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear; and time to time I thought I could see the movement of something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats whisked by, and mosquitoes droned overhead. The long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands; and those immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and half overthrown in a gale of wind. - STEVENSON: Travels with a Donkey. How many of the sounds and sights and actions depicted here are new and interesting to you? Is there any repetition of the same sound? Is it intentional or a jingle? A personal experience is described in the passage, and what is personal is often interesting. Subjects Give your personal experiences of: A night alone in a vacant house. A fishing excursion. A sail on the sea. A day of rain or snow. A first visit to a large store. A farmyard. I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted. -MOORE: Oft in the Stilly Night. 4. This speech being ended, a profound silence ensued, during which the Assistant-Comptroller delicately trifled with his documents, and glided off into a serene abstraction. I never met, in gaol or in courthouse, in the Queen's Bench or the Henry Street Police Office, so sleek, so tranquil, so elaborate an official. His motions were most delicately adjusted, even to the opening of an eye-lid, or the removal from his forehead of a fly. His voice flowed richly and softly from his lips, like a glass of Curaçoa into an Indiarubber flask. His fingers appeared to have been formed for the express purpose of writing with the finest steel pen, pressing the clearest-cut official seal, and measuring out, for the despatches on the public service, the neatest and narrowest red tape. The knot of his neck-tie was an epitome of the man. It struck one as having been put on by means of the most minute and exquisite machinery. To have accomplished such a knot by the aid of manual labor seemed at first sight impossible. MEAGHER: The Penal Voyage. This is a novel description of a person from a distinctly original point of view. There is a touch of exaggeration about it which is intentional and humorous. The writer reserves for the close one trait which is especially expressive of character. Describe: Subjects An odd character of your experience. An odd character of history. An odd character of fiction. When Bathurst walks the street the paviors cry There in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, GOLDSMITH: Deserted Village. But now his nose is thin, And a crook is in his back And a melancholy crack 5. "Why! 'tis the sea!" HOLMES: The Last Leaf. So it was. God's own sea and His retreat, where men come but seldom, and then at their peril. There the great ball-room of the winds and spirits stretched before us, to-day as smooth as if waxed and polished, and it was tessellated with bands of blue and green and purple, at the far horizon line, where, down through a deep mine shaft in the clouds, the hidden sun was making a silent glory. It was a dead sea, if you will. No gleam of sail, near or afar, lit up its loneliness. No flash of sea bird, poised for its prey, or beating slowly over the desolate waste, broke the heavy dullness that lay upon the breast of the deep. The sky stooped down and blackened the still waters; and anear, beneath the cliff on which we were standing, a faint fringe of foam alone was proof that the sea still lived, though its face was rigid and its voice was stilled, as of the dead. -SHEEHAN: My New Curate. This picture of the sea is interesting for the novel aspect it presents. How many new things does it tell you? What words would you consider too learned and ornate for ordinary prose? Try to give a fresh view, or, at least, well defined details in the exercises. Subjects Picture distinctly but not too ornately : A hidden brook In the leafy month of June. COLERIDGE: Ancient Mariner. It was the winter wild, while the heaven-born child MILTON: Nativity. 6. Wordsworth's popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trappings of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "The cloud-capt towers, the solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces, are swept to the ground, and "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." All the traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are obliterated and effaced. We begin de novo, on a tabula rasa of poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of tragedy are exploded as mere pantomime and trick, to return to the simplicity of truth and nature. Kings, queens, priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the distinctions of rank, birth, wealth, power, "the judge's robe, the marshal's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not to be found here. The author tramples on the pride of art with greater pride. The Ode and Epode, the Strophe and the Antistrophe he laughs to scorn. The harp of Homer, the trump of Pindar and of Alcaeus are still. The decencies of costume, the decorations of vanity are stripped off without mercy, as barbarous, idle and Gothic. The jewels in the crisped hair, the diadem on the polished brow are thought meretricious, theatrical, vulgar; and nothing contents his fastidious taste beyond a simple garland of flowers. - HAZLITT: Wordsworth. Sometimes the importance of an idea calls for its reiteration. In such a case, as here, the repeated idea receives varied expression. If Hazlitt said "gets rid of” for all the parts of poetry enumerated, the monotony would be boring. Besides, the appropriateness in its place of each new expression would be lost. You may suppose in the exercises that your proposition requires some such detailed explanation as Hazlitt gives to his topic. Resolve one idea of your topic into its parts and repeat the predicate, using the right word for each part. Note how in the model "the trappings of verse" is divided into its different parts. Subjects Go into details, but not too ornately: The barbarians (Huns, Goths) destroyed European civilization. The storm spread destruction on every side. The administration improved the city. All courses of study are objectionable to the indolent. All the world's a stage And one man in his time plays many parts. SHAKESPEARE. 7. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader imagine himself withdrawn for a moment from the sounds and motions of the living world and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious like the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves into the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him as if the dead were struggling in their sleep: scattered blocks of black stone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull, purple, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wreck of mossy ruins on whose rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. The blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains the scattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners passing from a nation's grave. RUSKIN: Modern Painters. There will be few occasions for the use of such highly ornate prose as in this description. The impressiveness of the scene and the feeling awakened by the sight of a "nation's grave" afford some reason for the diction. The passage, however, is good for a study of what is called word-painting. Note the abundant alliterations, excessive in the sixth sentence, and the doubling and tripling of words usually with climax of sound. The choice of details and their orderly connection are good. The several comparisons by which the gloom and death of the scene are pictured ("bones of man," dead in their sleep," etc.) are very good and in keeping with the tone of the passage. The exercises based on the model will for most students be pitched in a much lower key. Is the reference in the fifth sentence ("them") explicit? Subjects With less ornateness, describe: The peacefulness of a country scene. The restlessness of a city street. |