of paragraphs, to be noticed later1; it has also a bearing on the plan of composition as a whole."

EXAMPLES. - Two examples, given here, may illustrate respectively how a paragraph may fairly round out the type, or may confine itself to some section of it. Of so varied a subject not more than these illustrations can well be undertaken.

1. A paragraph in which the three stages are all more or less fully represented. It is about Oliver Cromwell:

"No sovereign ever carried to the throne so large a portion of the best qualities of the middling orders, so strong a sympathy with the feelings and interests of his people. He was sometimes driven to arbitrary measures; but he had a high, stout, honest, English heart. Hence it was that he loved to surround his throne with such men as Hale and Blake. Hence it was that he allowed so large a share of political liberty to his subjects, and that, even when an opposition dangerous to his power and to his person almost compelled him to govern by the sword, he was still anxious to leave a germ from which, at a more favorable season, free institutions might spring. We firmly believe that, if his first Parliament had not commenced its debates by disputing his title, his government would have been as mild at home as it was energetic and able abroad. He was a soldier; he had risen by war. Had his ambition been of an impure or selfish kind, it would have been easy for him to plunge his country into continental hostilities on a large scale, and to dazzle the restless factions which he ruled, by the splendor of his victories. Some of his enemies have sneeringly remarked, that in the successes obtained under his administration he had no personal share; as if a man who had raised himself from obscurity to empire solely by his military talents could have any unworthy reason for shrinking from military enterprise. This reproach is his highest glory. In the success of the English navy he could have no

1 See below, p. 379.
2 See below, p. 441.

Topic proposed.

I. DEFINED by con-
crete repetition.
II. ESTABLISHEDby
examples, drawn
from his policy

at home

and abroad;

and from his

magnanimity

in military

selfish interest.

and in naval triumphs.

III. APPLIED by consequences in the prosperity of

Its triumphs added nothing to his fame; its increase added nothing to his means of overawing his enemies; its great leader was not his friend. Yet he took a peculiar pleasure in encouraging that noble service which, of all the instruments employed by an English government, is the most impotent for mischief, and the most powerful for good. His administration was glorious, but with no vulgar glory. It was not one of those periods of overstrained and convulsive exertion which necessarily produce debility and languor. Its energy was natural, healthful, temperate. He placed England at the head of the Protestant interest, and in the first rank of Christian powers. He taught every nation to value her friendship and to dread her enmity. But and of the governhe did not squander her resources in a vain attempt to invest her with that supremacy which no power, in

the modern system of Europe, can safely affect, or can long retain.”1

the people

ment.

2. A paragraph devoted entirely to the middle or establishing stage, by giving examples. The topic, which the previous paragraph has defined at considerable length, is the power which great writers have to shape the language and literature of succeeding ages:

"If there is any one who illustrates this remark, it is Gibbon; I seem to trace his vigorous condensation and peculiar rhythm at every turn in the literature of the present day. Pope, again, is said to have tuned our versification. Since his time, any one, who has an ear and turn for poetry, can with little pains throw off a copy of verses equal or superior to the poet's own, and with far less of study and patient correction than would have been demanded of the poet himself for their production. Compare the choruses of the Samson Agonistes with any stanza taken at random in Thalaba: how much had the language gained in the interval between them! Without denying the high merits of Southey's beautiful romance, we surely shall not be wrong in saying, that in its unembarrassed eloquent flow, it is the language of the nineteenth century that speaks, as much as the author himself." 2

In detailing this important topic, indeed, the author goes on to give further instances and citations for two paragraphs more, before, in a short concluding paragraph, he sums up.

1 MACAULAY, Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History, Essays, Vol. i, p. 509. 2 NEWMAN, Idea of a University, p. 323.

145

Relation of Parts to Each Other. In order to preserve continuity in a paragraph, something more than plan is needed. There is still to be considered that linking of sentence with sentence by which the plan itself, real and systematic as it is, affects the reader not as plan but as uninterrupted flow and current of thought. To this end there must be a traceable relation, a felt reference, of each sentence to its preceding, while in turn it leaves its assertion in position for the next sentence to take it up. This reference, equally palpable in either case, may be explicit or implicit.

Explicit Reference. - This kind of reference between sentences is called explicit because there is some word or phrase whose definite function it is to make it, something which on account of this office we call a connective. Two kinds of con

nectives call here for notice.

1. Conjunctional, words or phrases. These, as has been demonstrated under the head of Conjunctional Relation,' have to do with the direction of the thought, whether as turning it some new way, adversative, illative, causal, — or as confirm-~

ing it in the direction in which it is already going.

deducted.

EXAMPLES. — The following, in its copiousness of connective words, illustrates how much more scrupulous the older writers were than the moderns to mark the relations of sentences:

"He kept a strait hand on his nobility, and chose rather to advance clergymen and lawyers, which were more obsequious to him, but had less interest in the people; which made for his absoluteness, but not for his safety. Insomuch as I am persuaded it was one of the causes of his troublesome reign. For that his nobles, though they were loyal and obedient, yet did not co-operate with him, but let every man go his own way. He was not afraid of an able man as Lewis the Eleventh was. But contrariwise he was served by the ablest men that then were to be found; without which his affairs could not have prospered as they did. Neither did

1 See above, pp. 259–267.

he care how cunning they were that he did employ: for he thought himself to have the master-reach. And as he chose well, so he held them up well. For it is a strange thing, that though he were a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious, and his times full of secret conspiracies and troubles; yet in twenty-four years reign he never put down or discomposed counsellor or near servant, save only Stanley the Lord Chamberlain." 1

The modern tendency is to make connection unobtrusive by using conjunctions that may be put inside the sentence, leaving the outset for more important words, and by omitting such connection as the reader may be trusted to think for himself. The effect of this is to make the diction not only more equable but more closely knit; it is one of the important results of more masterful art in prose.

NOTE. Of connectives that may be removed from the beginning may be mentioned however, therefore, then, likewise, too; and such phrases as on the contrary, as it were, that is, nevertheless. Of connectives that modern prose very generally suppresses the most notable, perhaps, is for; the word and, too, is almost entirely banished from the beginning of the sentence.

2. Demonstrative, words and phrases; and, where these fail in clearness or strength, repetition of the word or phrase needed to make the connection. These, not affecting the direction, are used rather to express some resumption or immediate sequence, - to make a close joinery of some new thought with the preceding.2

NOTE AND EXAMPLE. Of demonstrative words the personal and demonstrative pronouns are most relied on. The relative was formerly so used; for example: "But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar."3 Nowadays, however, this use is exceptional and somewhat archaic.

1 BACON, History of Henry VII (quoted from Craik's English Prose, Vol. ii, p. 29).

2 Under Retrospective Reference, pp. 246–254 above, are given some of the principles and cautions connected with demonstrative reference.

3 Galatians iv. 23, 24.

Demonstrative phrases are for the most part the combination of a demonstrative pronoun with other words, so as to denote some adverbial relation; as, in this case, in this manner, under these circumstances, this done, and the like.

The following paragraph will illustrate various means of demonstrative connection, including also repetition: —

66

Friedrich does not neglect these points of good manners; along with which something of substantial may be privately conjoined. For example, if he had in secret his eye on Jülich and Berg, could anything be fitter than to ascertain what the French will think of such an enterprise ? What the French; and next to them what the English, that is to say, Hanoverians, who meddle much in affairs of the Reich. For these reasons and others he likewise, probably with more study than in the Bielfeld case, despatches Colonel Camas to make his compliment at the French Court, and in an expert way take soundings there. Camas, a fat sedate military gentleman, of advanced years, full of observation, experience and sound sense, 'with one arm, which he makes do the work of two, and nobody can notice that the other arm resting in his coat-breast is of cork, so expert is he,' — will do in this matter what is feasible; probably not much for the present. He is to call on Voltaire, as he passes, who is in Holland again, at the Hague for some months back; and deliver him 'a little cask of Hungary Wine,' which probably his Majesty had thought exquisite. Of which, and the other insignificant passages between them, we hear more than enough in the writings and correspondences of Voltaire about this time."1

Implicit Reference. Quite in line with the tendency, just spoken of, to put connectives where they will be unobtrusive, is the art of making the whole reference implicit, that is, a connection not advertised by words at all, but involved in the structure of the sentence and in the natural closeness of the thought.

I. In the structure of the sentence, this reference is effected by means of inversion for adjustment, the change of order which a succeeding sentence undergoes in obedience to the attraction exerted by some like or contrasted idea in the

1 CARLYLE, History of Frederick the Great, Book xi, Chap. i (Vol. iii, p. 282). 2 For which, see above, p. 278.