"The thing is infinitely difficult. The skill and strategy of it cannot be taught." Then follows this transition thought: "And so historians take another way, which is easier: they tell part of the truth, the part most to their taste, or most suitable to their talents, and obtain readers to their liking among those of similar tastes and talents to their own." Going on through an intermediate paragraph of amplification, in which are described some of the partial histories that deal with the kinds of truth they like and let the rest go, this transition thought leads finally to the inquiry: "Is there no way in which all the truth may be made to hold together in a narrative so strongly knit and so harmoniously colored that no reader will have either the wish or the skill to tear its patterns asunder, and men will take it all, unmarred and as it stands, rather than miss the zest of it?" The answer to this is the first stage of the discussion, which (a negative stage) is opened by the sentence: "It is evident the thing cannot be done by the dispassionate' annalist."

III. THE AMPLIFYING IDEAS.

In the making of the plan, the course and movement of the thought have been charted out; the relations of the main ideas to the theme and to each other have been determined ; ; but as yet these ideas have been expressed only as headings, and together they have formed only a skeleton, a bony structurę. As the next and final stage of composition now, this bony structure must be clothed with the rounded fulness of life; the core ideas must take to themselves a fitting body of explanatory, illustrative, and vivifying thought. To supply this, with all the finishing touches necessary to make the composition complete, is the work of amplification; a process in which invention and style are equally concerned, being their final meeting-ground.

Amplification is often regarded with suspicion, as if it were merely spreading the thought out thin, or putting in what is called "padding"; and no advice about writing is more popular than the advice to "boil it down." This suspicion is directed, however, only to the abuse of amplification, which

may be easy and great; but rightly managed amplification is simply the most vital and necessary process in all composition, it is in fact the summit of composition itself, approached from the inventive side.1

The Glow of Composition. this final stage of the work, we need to take practical note of the fact that amplification is a more fervid process than planning. The writer is in a more exalted mood. From a mood of severe discriminating thought, whose task it was to gather, weigh, and distribute ideas so as to satisfy the logical sense, he has passed, so to say, into an ardor of thinking, wherein the spirit of the work is acting; he is living through something of the vigor, the clear vision, the emotion, that he is trying to awaken in his reader. Thought and thinking both these enter into the work; and it is important to use the energy of the latter for what it is worth.

As we enter upon the study of

For this glow of composition sharpens his faculties and gives him clearer insight into all his work. It reacts also on the plan that he has made. New wordings are suggested, new distinctions and points of effect, and not infrequently changes of order. This does not mean that the plan has become useless; too many think it does and throw away the plan here; it simply means that the course of thought has become a more vital thing, more self-justifying and natural. It suggests also that plan-making is not something to be done once for all and closed; rather, the plan should be kept open and flexible, to gain all it may from the quickened mood of composition. A useful maxim to bear in mind is, Do not be the slave of your own prearranged plan of discourse.2

1 "Amplification, I say, which in strict definition is not making a few thoughts go a long way, by powerful inflation, but clothing your outlined [discourse] in a fullrounded corporeity of actual, ponderable thoughts, all of them relational, of course, to that outline with its first, second, third and fourth, of main thoughts."- BURTON, Yale Lectures, p. 59.

2 This conclusion has been anticipated above, p. 432.

Of amplification, it is the business of the present section, after first glancing at its opposite, to discuss its objects, its means, and its accessories.

I.

The Province of Unamplified Expression.

It is to be conceded that not all enunciations of thought need amplification. There are cases where the most condensed and pointed expression is to be devised as final and best, - where any enlargement or elucidation is apt to result in weakening and dilution.1 Such cases a sound literary instinct will recognize.

For this reason, along with the ability to amplify, the writer should no less diligently cultivate the exact opposite

the ability to compress thought into the telling and pregnant form of aphorism. An aphorism is not merely a short sentence. It is a short sentence crowded so full of thought that it overflows. For its end of sententiousness it may be somewhat sweeping, one-sided, paradoxical; still, when the reader has thought beyond its bounds, as its art of putting things makes him do, it corrects itself. To write aphoristically is a native gift, largely, but it may also be worked for and developed. And its value is that it not only promotes the habit of thinking much in little compass; it enables one better to fix his landmarks of thought, its cardinal and its

1 From the side of style this liability has been touched upon under Condensation for Vigor, p. 295, above.

2 "Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of sciences; for discourse of illustration is cut off; recitals of examples are cut off; discourse of connexion and order is cut off; descriptions of practice are cut off. So there remaineth nothing to fill the Aphorisms but some good quantity of observation: and therefore no man can suffice, nor in reason will attempt, to write Aphorisms, but he that is sound and grounded.” — BACON, Advancement of Learning, Book ii, p. 172.

3 "The very essence of an aphorism is that slight exaggeration which makes it more biting while less rigidly accurate.” — STEPHEN, Hours in a Library, Vol. ii, p. 3. — The danger to be guarded against in such writing is spoken of, p. 276, above.

subordinate points, by putting a fit share of his expression into unamplified form.1

It is well in any discourse to steer the thought now and then to some sententious conclusion, which shall summarize what has gone before, or nucleize what is to come, or enunciate some memorable lesson of life. It is in such utterances that the weighty and important points should be found; this is the special value of unamplified thought in the body of a work.

Aphoristic Literature. An indication of the estimate people set on unamplified thought is seen in the fact that every nation has its distinct body of gnomic or aphoristic literature, in the shape of popular maxims, bons mots, felicitous phrases, and the like. The existence of these everywhere is a standing testimony to the value men put upon "the art of putting things." Relatively small in quantity, these weighty utterances have access and influence far beyond what their bulk betokens ; they represent the packed thought of all classes, and circulate like current coin.

One of the oldest philosophies of the world, the Hebrew, which was a philosophy of practical life, adopted this sententious form, which is called the mashal, for its vehicle of instruction; thus showing a fine sense of what the form is especially good for, a lesson of life, which none can misunderstand and which therefore needs no elucidation. In pointed, balanced, often antithetic enunciation it gathers into one utterance the result of seasoned observation, experience, wisdom. And so, both for its yield of truth and for its good

1 "Every expedient which reduces circumlocutory expression promotes the power and the habit of condensed thinking. A taste for short words, for Saxon words, for unqualified substantives, for crisp sentences, helps the thinking power to work in close quarters. A writer who acquires a fondness for speaking brevities learns to think in brevities. Happy is the man whose habit it is to think laconically. There are few things in which the reaction of style on thought and on the thinking force is so obvious as in the growth of this condensing power." - PHELPS, Theory of Preaching,

P. 447.

effect on one's own way of thinking, conversance with this kind of literature has great charm and value.

NOTE. -The classic and model of aphoristic literature is the Book of Proverbs. Other collections are: Pascal's Thoughts, The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld, Joubert's Thoughts, Poor Richard's Sayings, Hare's Guesses at Truth, and Helps's Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd. Besides these some standard authors — Shakespeare, Bacon, Pope, Landor, and Emerson are noted for their sententious style, rich in wise and pithy sayings.

II.

Objects for which Amplification is employed. The question here naturally rising, Why amplify at all? is answered by recurrence to the shape in which the outline plan has left the thought. It is all there, essentially, but its condensed form, as mere headings, does not avail, except perhaps in some individual sayings, to make it effect its end. In some places it is too sweeping and absolute, in others too crowded or brief, in others still too flat and spiritless. To read it in that form is like taking food that is condensed into tablets.

Three principal objects of amplification may thus be deduced and exemplified.

1. To give proper range, limits, and present application to an idea. In unamplified form an assertion may be too sweeping; or while true it may be only a half truth needing to be guarded and supplemented; or its present application may be unusual, needing therefore to be fixed. The first impulse of amplification, therefore, is toward a kind of definition of terms, a making sure how much or how little our assertion shall mean.

2. To give body to an idea, by dwelling on it long enough for the reader's mind to feel round it and grasp it and realize it. It takes time to get the bearings of an idea, and to get it settled and as it were at home in the mind; so the very object