or understood, and wherein the conjunctions are of the coördinating class. These several verbs may either be predicates of the same subject, or may have their separate subjects; in which latter case the whole sentence is a cluster of sentences bound into one by a logical connection.

In two ways the composite character of this type of sentence, while still intact, may be somewhat disguised. In a series of more than two predications the connecting conjunctions may be expressed only with the last, or may be wholly omitted. And secondly, when the several verbs would naturally be the same if expressed, the verb may be expressed only once for the series.

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EXAMPLES. -1. Of plain composita. With a single subject: "The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever.” — With a subject for each verb: "Art makes knowledge a means, but science makes it an end"; Then this world will fade away, and the other world will shine forth"; "The advice is the same, though the reason of it is different." Here the several coördinating conjunctions are but, and, and though. Clusters of more than two members: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; "He provides, and she dispenses; he gives commandments, and she rules by them; he rules her by authority, and she rules him by love; she ought by all means to please him, and he must by no means displease her." Here each of the semicoloned members is itself a composita of two members.

2. Of composita disguised. The example last quoted shows asyndeton between the larger members. The classical example of asyndeton is, “I came, I saw, I conquered."— Ellipsis of repeated verb: "They never see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation." Here the full sense would be "nor do they see any crime," etc. "It is not the business of the Arts to worry the reason, but rather Λ to stimulate the imagination, and Λ soothe the feelings of mankind." 3

3.

The Evoluta Type. -The essential character of this type is subordination. It is the kind of sentence wherein one main

1 For coördinating conjunctions, see above, p. 260.

2 This latter ellipsis, which gives the condensing effect of abruptness (cf. p. 298, bove) is technically called Asyndeton.

3 These quotations are nearly all taken from Professor Earle, op. cit., pp. 78, 79.

assertion has appended to it ancillary clauses giving some kind of explanatory or limiting matter. These helping clauses may be appended either to the noun parts of the sentence (subject, object of a verb, object of a preposition), in which case its connective is a relative pronoun or relative adverb; or to the verb parts (predicate, infinitive, participle), in which case its connective is a conjunction of the subordinating class.1 Often the Evoluta has an inverted arrangement, the appended clauses, of condition, time, explanation, and the like, being placed first, and thus accumulating for the main predicate the distinction of suspensive structure.2

-

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EXAMPLES. 1. Of various ways of introducing subordinate clauses. The introducing words, conjunctions or relatives, are here italicized. "People usually consider that an opinion by which no fee is earned is worth just what it cost." - Englishmen are prepared to believe that if their country is to continue to be the greatest nation of the world, it must be as the centre of a naval confederacy which has its harbors in every sea.”. "The Catholic gentry, who had been painted as longing for the coming of the stranger, led their tenantry, when the stranger came, to the muster at Tilbury." "Milton, who, in his letter to Hartlib, had declared, that to read Latin with an English mouth is as ill a hearing as Low French, required that Elwood should learn and practice the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he would talk with foreigners."

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2. Of inverted order of evolute clauses. "That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter, It is most true.". Why it is, and what it is to issue in, and how it is what it is, and how we came to be introduced into it, and what is our destiny, are all mysteries." Here the subordinate clauses are coördinated with each other by and, all being alike subject to the main assertion. "If I cannot go with the authority and protection of my government, I prefer not to go at all."8

It hardly needs to be remarked here that these types may be mixed in many ways; the fact that any modifying element

1 For the list of relatives, pronominal and adverbial, see Table of Retrospective Reference, p. 247; for subordinating conjunctions, p. 265.

2 For suspension by conjunctional clauses, see p. 281.

3 Quotations taken, as before, mostly from Earle, op. cit., pp. 81, 83.

may assume the clausal form makes this mixture natural to any underlying structure. It is not difficult, however, in most cases, to detect the relations of one type to another, and so explain the combination.

II. INTERRELATION OF ELEMENTS.

The ample, though limited, range of logical relations that, may exist between the constituent elements of a sentence all grows out of the necessary quality of unity. However broad and diversified the impression made by the sentence, it must be one impression; all the lines of assertion, implication, shading, must focalize into one comprehensive thought. To this end account must be taken of these internal relations, and of the means of making them clear to the reader.

I.

Errors of Interrelation. An organism which is a unity must just as truly, if it is an organism, be a diversity. Two errors of interrelation, arising respectively from the disregard of these necessary qualities, may here be noted.

1. The disregard of unity shows itself in what is called the heterogeneous sentence. This is a sentence run on carelessly, admitting all collateral ideas that can be crowded in, until there are several distinct subjects of thought, and no one of paramount importance to which all may be counted as subservient. It is much like talking without a pause till one is out of breath. It is not the same as a long sentence; it is rather a long sentence that fails to produce unity of effect.

EXAMPLES. The tendency to let a sentence become heterogeneous may work in two ways: trying to crowd the interior of the sentence too full of extraneous matters; and tacking on an afterthought at the end.

1. Heterogeneous by insignificant details. "The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure for two different things; and not only calls the fol

but

lowers or votaries of them by the several names of busy and idle men; distinguishes the faculties of mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first wisdom, and of the other wit: which is a Saxon word, used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call ingenio, and the French esprit, both from the Latin; though I think wit more particularly signifies that of poetry, as may occur in remarks on the Runic language." Here there is material for not less than three sentences, their subjects of remark being:

Profit and pleasure, how named in men and in the mind.

Derivation and synonymy of the word wit.

Wit ought to be used exclusively as a poetic term.

As soon as we separate these subjects, we see how impossible it is to make them all parts of the expression of a single thought.

2. Heterogeneous by a tacked-on addition. "He falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry, and preference of the new, that I could not read his strains without indignation; which no quality among men is so apt to raise in me as self-sufficiency." Here the relative clause starts off on a new idea, suggested by the word indignation. The same thing may occur in narrative details; e.g. "Tillotson died in this year. He was exceedingly beloved both by King William and Queen Mary, who nominated Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln, to succeed him."1 Here the nomination of Dr. Tenison is entirely apart from the idea of the previous clause.

2. The disregard of the diversity that may legitimately characterize the sentence is shown in what may be called the insignificant sentence. The evil of the heterogeneous sentence is not cured by making each assertion into a sentence by itself. Apart from the disagreeable effect of a series of curt remarks, not all assertions will bear to be made so prominent. A statement merely explanatory or qualifying ought to be subordinated to others, and the only way to make this subordination appear is to weave the explanatory clause in with other things in the same sentence structure; for as soon as it is set off by periods it sounds as if coördinate in value. A small explanatory clause set off by itself is not only insig

1 The above-quoted sentences are taken (without his italics) from BAIN, Composition and Rhetoric, pp. 135, 136. All are from the older writers, who had not reached the sense of unity and organism that now prevails in sentences.

nificant, it breaks the continuity of the larger thoughts. Its matter may be worth saying, but not worth challenging independent attention; this is a point that the writer's literary sense must settle.

EXAMPLES. 1. Here is recalled the attempt once made by a clergyman to give more point and snap to a Scripture verse by periods; with the following result: "The pastures are clothed with flocks. The valleys also are covered over with corn. They shout for joy. They also sing." last assertion, They also sing, may acquire a snap, but it is really made insignificant by its separation.

This

2. How intermediate clauses of comparatively less importance may be necessary to subserve the continuity from the chief idea of one sentence to that of another may be seen in the following, in which the intermediate portion is put in brackets: " Of two old men, the one who is not your father speaks to you with the more sensible authority; [for in the paternal relation the oldest have lively interests and remain still young. Thus I have known two young men great friends; each swore by the other's father; the father of each swore by the other lad ;] and yet each pair of parent and child were perpetually by the ears." 2 Here the part within brackets is mostly employed in conducting the thought from general statement to concrete example. In the following this intermediate character is neglected, and of the sentences in brackets some are insignificant, while all break the continuity: "An individual is an encloser. [Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what quality is in him he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return into his own good at last. He animates all he can, and he sees only what he animates.] He encloses the world, as the patriot does his country, as a material basis for his character, and a theatre for action."3 Here, as we compare the first and last sentences, there seems to be a needless detour in thought between, because the middle sentences are not properly subordinated to the main current of the idea.

1 Psalm lxv. 13.

2 STEVENSON, Talk and Talkers, Works, Vol. xiii, p. 284.

3 EMERSON, Character, Works, Vol. iii, p. 95.