work transferring its ideas fully and accurately to the mind. of the reader. The training for this clearness, therefore, is just whatever best develops the thinking powers, in keenness, in discrimination, in grasp, in calm poise and judgment; but besides this there is also needed much patient and systematic culture in language, to subdue it to perfect flexibility and obedience. To him who has a passion for clearness the vocabulary and the grammar are a veritable workshop; a source also of the sternest practical interest.

II.

Force. Clear and intelligible expression, being the staple, the backbone of composition, is of course to be cultivated first and most conscientiously of all; but the cases in which mere clearness is enough, without the aid of other qualities, belong to the relatively elementary undertakings of literature, those works in which the bare information or reasoned thought is all-sufficient to supply the interest. But when the idea comes home more closely to reader and writer, — when on the one hand it must gain a lodgment in dull minds or stimulate a laggard attention, when on the other its importance kindles the writer's enthusiasm or stirs his deep emotions, there is in it or must be imparted to it greater life than its merely intelligible statement would demand; the question of making it interesting and impressive comes to the front. The various features that go to give life and vigor to style we gather under the general name of force.

While by clearness the object is to economize the reader's powers by making the style plain and easy, by force the object is to economize indirectly by stimulating his mind to do more, to realize more vividly or bring more interest and ardor to the subject.' Hence whatever imparts force to the style is something that gives a kind of shock or challenge to

1 See above, p. 25, 2.

The ways

of

- By the

the mind, urging it to some centre of interest. doing this may be grouped under two general principles. Connotation or Force through Choice of Expression. connotation of a word or phrase we mean what it implies or makes one think of, over and beyond what it literally says. Such connotation may suggest an associated object or idea; as when in saying, "The words immediately fell oily on the wrath of the brothers," the writer makes us think not only of mollifying words but of oil poured on agitated water. Or it may suggest how the writer feels, and would have us feel, about what he says; as when in saying a thing he puts it not as an assertion but as an exclamation, thus conveying with it his feeling of wonder. Connotation, as it may take an infinity of shadings and implications, may influence the reader in the subtlest ways; but just so far as it enriches thought or rouses feeling, to that degree it infuses force into the style.

Only the more obvious ways of connotation can here be noted; others will be left for more detailed treatment in other parts of the book.

1. The employment of vernacular words, words that connote the vigor and plain simplicity of homely thought. A specific word is stronger than a general or comprehensive one; short words ordinarily more forcible than long; Saxon derivatives than Latin or Greek; idioms than formal and bookish words.

2. The employment of descriptive words; which, while they have their relation to beauty of style, are yet more truly instruments of force. By descriptive words is meant words that portray some striking or concrete or picturesque aspect of the subject; connoting thus the vividness of an object of sight. This is very useful in abstract subjects.

3. The employment of words in a tropical or polarized sense; as when they are used out of their natural place in the vocabulary, or connote some implication that one would not expect. Under this head comes the use of figurative

expression, in all its aspects. Such use of words gives them force by setting the reader thinking about them.

4. The cutting out of the minor and expletive words of a passage, so that the strong elements, the vital words, may stand forth unshaded.

Emphasis or Force through Arrangement. In oral discourse emphasis may be given to any word by giving it greater stress in enunciation. Written discourse is not open to this means; the reader has to judge what words are emphatic by the position in which they are placed. Through the structure of the sentence the emphasis is directed at the writer's will on the points of special impressiveness; these accordingly are points at which force is concentrated.

The following are the main aspects of this means of securing force :

1. Differences of stress, in all degrees of delicacy, are secured by placing a sentence-element before or after some other, at the beginning or end of the sentence or clause, or somewhere out of its natural and expected place. The ability to estimate accurately the effect of every smallest change in order, and so to arrange the whole that every element will seem to emphasize itself, is one of the most imperative and valuable accomplishments in composition.

2. Antithesis, which has been implied as an arrangement that promotes clearness by making one idea set off another,' is no less truly an instrument of force, concentrating attention as it does on paired or contrasted elements and thus putting them into stress.

3. A strong impression needs in most cases to be a quick impression. Hence one of the acknowledged promoters of force is an arrangement or parsimony of structure which secures brevity; shown in some form of what is variously known as condensed, pointed, or epigrammatic expression.

1 See above, p. 30, 3.

In endeavoring to secure force by brevity occasions sometimes rise where there is a clash between force and clearness.1 For while clearness demands the presence of particles and explanatory elements that though they articulate the thought tend also to cumber its movement, force demands that these be cut down or dispensed with, as far as may be, in order not to enfeeble the important words. In such cases, when one quality can be secured only at some expense to the other, the question must be decided by the determinate object in view, the writer considering whether that object can best be promoted by fulness of detail or by vigor of impression.2

NOTE. — A brief and pointed assertion, like an aphorism or proverb, sets one thinking; an assertion detailed and amplified does one's thinking, as it were, for him. The former is the more forcible, the latter more clear. Emerson's expression, "Hitch your wagon to a star," is striking by its brevity; one remembers it and is stimulated by it; but to think out what it means and how it applies requires some meditation. On the other hand, if it were traced out in some amplified form it would run the risk of becoming tame and platitudinous. Skilful writers, and especially public speakers, generally combine the two ways of expression, the detailed for explanation, the briefer for summing up and enforcing. Compare WHATELEY, Elements of Rhetoric, p. 351.

- As related to the writer

Force based in Emotion and Will. himself, force in style is the result and evidence of some strong emotion at work infusing vigor into his words. He realizes vividly the truth of what he says, and so it becomes intense and fervid; he has a deep conviction of its importance, and

1 The classic recognition of this clash is Horace's well-known remark:

"brevis esse laboro,

Obscurus fio." - De Arte Poetica, 25.

2 Brevity thus goes deeper than style and relates itself to the organism of subjectmatter. "In order to be brief," says De Quincey, "a man must take a short sweep of view: his range of thought cannot be extensive; and such a rule, applied to a general method of thinking, is fitted rather to aphorisms and maxims as upon a known subject, than to any process of investigation as upon a subject yet to be fathomed.". DE QUINCEY, Essay on Style, Works (Riverside edition), Vol. iv, p. 214.

so it becomes cogent and impressive. Along with this fervor of feeling his will is enlisted; he is determined, as it were, to make his reader think as he does, and to make his cause preEvery employment of word and figure is tributary to

vail. this.

Genuine force in style cannot be manufactured: if the style has not serious conviction to back it, it becomes contorted; if it has not a vivifying emotion, it becomes turgid. Force is the quality of style most dependent on character.

The writer's culture for force, therefore, is in its deepest analysis a culture of character. To think closely and seriously; to insist on seeing fact or truth for one's self and not merely echo it as hearsay; to cherish true convictions, not mere fashions or expedients of thinking,—these are the traits in the culture of character that make for forcible and virile expression.

III.

Beauty. This third fundamental quality of style is supplementary to the others, that is, not ordinarily to be sought until first clearness and then force are provided for, and not to be cultivated at expense to them. Beauty, however, is just as necessary, and, broadly interpreted, just as universal, as are clearness and force. It is the quality of style which answers to the endeavor to please.

It can easily be seen how real is the occasion for beauty. An idea may be stated with perfect clearness, may make also a strong impression on the reader's mind; and yet many of its details may be an offense to his taste, or crude expression and harsh combinations of sound may impair the desired effect by compelling attention to defective form. Any such disturbing element is a blemish none the less though the reader may not be able to explain or even locate it. His vague sense that the form of expression is crude and bungling, that the thought