statement or, as oftener occurs, in apothegm. In such case not repetition alone is sought, but summary and enforcement. EXAMPLE. In the following paragraph the topic is propounded in a plain statement at the beginning, and then, after the amplification, is repeated in a somewhat more elaborate form at the end: "A man of a Polite Imagination is let into a great many Pleasures, that the Vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a Picture, and find an agreeable Companion in a Statue. He meets with a secret Refreshment in a Description, and often feels a greater Satisfaction in the Prospect of Fields and Meadows, than another does in the Possession. It gives him, indeed, a Kind of Property in every thing he sees, and makes the most rude uncultivated Parts of Nature administer to his Pleasures: So that he looks upon the World, as it were, in another Light, and discovers in it a Multitude of Charms, that conceal themselves from the generality of Mankind.”1 The Double Topic. - A mould of paragraph analogous to the composita type of sentence calls here for mention: the paragraph that sums up in a double topic. It is not very common; but being highly artistic, is correspondingly notable when successfully achieved. While a composita sentence may accumulate a considerable number of coördinate members, the more complicated scale of the paragraph can hardly venture with safety on more than two; hence the term, double topic. These members generally answer each other as a contrasting pair; and may either occupy each its half of the structure, or be set against each other in a series of distinctions. EXAMPLES. —1. In the following the first topic, strength, passes by a natural gradation into the second topic, sweetness; the two making up thus an answering and contrasting pair : "Critics of Michelangelo have sometimes spoken as if the only characteristic of his genius were a wonderful strength, verging, as in the things of the imagination great strength always does, on what is singular or 1 ADDISON, in The Spectator, No. 411. strange. A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art; that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable. But that they shall give pleasure and exert a charm over us is indispensable too; and this strangeness must be sweet also- —a lovely strangeness. And to the true admirers of Michelangelo this is the true type of the Michelangelesque - sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an energy of conception which seems at every moment about to break through all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural thingsex forti dulcedo." 1 2. In the following a series of contrasts bring out the double topic of the Platonic and the Baconian philosophy: "To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the stars; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed followed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, and within bow-shot, and hit it in the white. The philosophy of Plato began in words and ended in words, noble words indeed, words such as were to be expected from the finest of human intellects exercising boundless dominion over the finest of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in observations and ended in arts."2 II. THE PARAGRAPH IN STRUCTURE. That a paragraph should have a structure, palpable, planned, articulated, is a necessity arising from the second and third qualities already mentioned, continuity and proportion. A continuous current of thought, unbroken, undislocated, this is its ideal. The end that the working out of a structure is to attain is, keeping this current unbroken, and keeping it at 1 PATER, The Renaissance, p. 75. 2 MACAULAY, Essay on Lord Bacon, Essays, Vol. iii, p. 458. every point in place and symmetry. This requires systematic arrangement, plan.1 By a plan, however, is not meant a formal and obtrusive skeleton-structure, as if the paragraph were merely an essay within an essay. Such advertising of the plan belongs rather to the next stage of procedure, the composition as a whole. It is to be remembered that the individual sentences of the paragraph, being the final expression of their thought, are at once outline and amplification; the outline is covered and disguised, as such, by the detail and coloring of which it is the nucleus. None the less truly, however, it is there, and has to be determinately put there; under the finished surface it works, unperceived, a constant effect of orderly progress. It has its introductory outset; it keeps the reader aware throughout of the mutual bearings of the thoughts; it swings round to a cadence and conclusion. I. Relation of Parts to Sum. - In the evolution of such a plan the whole current of the paragraph has to be made up with traceable reference to the sum. It matters not whether this latter is expressed as a topic or implied as a total resultant; in any case the relation, the scale, the distance, the movement of each sentence must be realized and shaped with this connection in mind. Typical Scheme of Paragraph Structure. This requisite may best be made clear, perhaps, by presenting here a scheme of structure, to which the body of the paragraph may be referred as a type. This scheme, it may be premised, is not an arbitrary framework; it represents, in fact, on the scale of the paragraph, the logical progress that obtains in all ordered thinking. 1 "Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision."— WENDELL, English Composition, p. 117. If, as stated above,' the total effect of a paragraph should be reducible to a single sentence, conversely the expansion of a single sentence, with due observance of the legitimate dependencies of clause and clause, may be taken as the pattern of paragraph structure. The same relations exist between sentences in the paragraph as between clauses in the sentence3; only in the paragraph, as befits its ampler scale, the relations are more strongly marked, and grouped with greater sense of sequence and climax. In this respect the plan of the paragraph is intermediate between that of the sentence and that of the whole composition. Generally speaking, then, any sentence, to be worthy of a place in the plan, should contribute directly to explain, or particularize, or prove, or apply the thought of the topic. Nor should these functions be mixed at hap-hazard. The sense of sequence and climax just mentioned dictates that they rise out of each other in a logical growth, and be graduated from a natural outset to a natural finish. The following table, in which the interior organism of the paragraph is set forth in three main stages, may be taken as a comprehensive scheme of structure. The topic, expressed or hinted. I. Whatever is needed to define the topic. Taking the form of Repetition, Obverse, or 1 See above, p. 358. 2 "The principles which so plainly bring paragraphs and order out of chaos are the very same which, applied habitually and under different conditions, make the difference between good sentences and bad.". WENDELL, English Composition, P. 118. 3 What range these may cover has been specified above, pp. 323, 324. II. Whatever is needed to establish the topic. Taking the form of Example, Illustration, Detail (particularization), or Proof. III. Whatever is needed to apply the topic. Taking the form of Summary, Consequence, or Enforcement. Of course no single paragraph could follow all these subdivisions without being unwieldy; they are presented in this relative order merely to show the place they occupy with reference to a rounded scheme. When expressed, this is their typical order and relation. A like thing may be said of the main stages themselves. These may be proportioned in a great variety of ways; some one of them generally taking the predominance, in bulk and specialization, the others condensed or even wholly elided. It is on this freedom of variation and proportion that the flexibility, the individual character, of a paragraph depends. All the while, however, the type exists, a kind of steadying-point in the writer's mind, to keep the lines of treatment from becoming lawless and unbalanced. The claims of length, too, have an important application here. Rightly to define, or establish, or apply, or even state a topic may require so much space that only the section of the scheme that deals with this can be given within reasonable paragraph limits; the other sections being left in turn to their place, and disposed of according to their importance. It is this fact, largely, which gives rise to the various kinds |