thought is not essentially different from that of the simple

assertion :

Your grave blunder surprises me greatly.

or, in the passive voice :

I am greatly surprised by (at) your grave blunder.

or, the dependent statement turned into a nominative:

That you should have made such a grave blunder surprises me greatly.

To the grammarian, "That you should have made such a grave blunder" and "Your grave blunder" have the same value; they are both nominative to the main verb "surprises.

h. Quite different from a is the construction which may perhaps be called composite; it consists of one long sentence combining several co-ordinate sentences, each of which has its own subject and verb. For example:

The streets of the old capital are sad and silent, the bells ring no more, the carriages slacken their pace.-DAUDET.

Fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of our horses.-DE QUINCEY.

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler; and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. -MACAULAY.

Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the best part? -THACKERAY.

. . . and by noon perhaps there is a haze lying along the hills and meadows, the distant valleys look gray and warm in the sunlight, the mountains beyond them are faintly blue, the sky itself looks yellow or rosy.-J. C. Van Dyke.

A slight variation may be noted in the following:

The little Dauphin is ill; the little Dauphin is dying.—DAUDet.

The moments were numbered; the strife was finished; the vision was closed.-DE QUINCEY.

In all these composite constructions there is a principle of unity. Each one of the co-ordinate statements helps in carrying on a joint movement or combines to make a single icture.

4. Specimens of Unconditioned Statement.

1. The subject is expanded by being defined in several clauses.

The convenience of being able to make appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the fashion spread fast.—MACAULAY.

The subject is a group of words or phrases.

The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal lull.-DE QUINCEY.

A very short expansion:

Dust and moisture, too, are rising.—TYNDALL,

2. The subject of the principal sentence is itself a sentence, or very nearly a sentence.

What it is that constitutes the look of a gentleman is more easily felt than described.-HAZLITT.

Whether you go or stay does not matter.

That he wrote this is evident.

Or the subject of the principal sentence may be explained in a subordinate sentence of definition :

The belief that Junius was Sir Philip Francis is now losing ground. That our grandfathers shared in the prejudices of their day is all that makes them human to us; and that nevertheless they could act bravely and wisely on occasion makes them only the more venerable.—LOWELL.

In the following the subject of "is" is a partial sentence, and the predicate "this is followed by a long sentence of apposition, equivalent to a definition :

What I do say, and what common sense teaches, and what all history teaches, is this, that you cannot have one executive power and two real parliaments, two parliaments possessing such powers as the parliaments of this country have possessed ever since the revolution, two parliaments to the deliberate sense of which the sovereign must conform.-MACAULAY.

3. The verb is expanded.

Her white and delicate fingers dance madly upon the yellowed ivory, then sweep gravely over the keys of ebony, and recommence to flutter distractedly hither and thither.—AURIOL.

He... saw to the spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency.-THACKERAY.

The botanist has classed, ordered, sectioned, and specied the different trees, and christened each with a Latinized name.-J. C. Van Dyke.

4. The object of the verb is expanded.

What do you see? A large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor; at the far end fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor some empty corn-bags.-GEORGE ELIOT.

His name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivaling that of the eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care.—MACAULAY.

5. The subject of the sentence is an infinitive clause.

To bow to him [Dryden], and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege.— MACAULAY.

To lose a volume to C. [oleridge] carries some sense and meaning in it. -LAMB.

In the following the sentence is inverted, the infinitive clause as subject coming at the end; the "it" being grammatically pleonastic :

It is, however, as undesirable as it is impossible to try to feed the minds of children only upon facts of observation or record.-C. W. ELIOT. The infinitive clause is the predicate of the sentence.

The dictate of humanity is without doubt to take a child from an unfaithful parent and give it the training most likely to lead to an honest and industrious life.-D. D. FIELD.

The object of the principal verb is also subject of an infinitive (accusative with infinitive).

Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself.-THOREAU.

He sees the stone gargoyles disgorge the water of the slates into the confused abysm of galleries, etc.-LOUIS BERTRAND.

6. The sentence contains a comparison, found usually in the predicate.

Let him be careful not to show himself so thin-skinned as to mind either [the spoils-politician or the unjust critic]; let him fight his way forward, paying only so much regard to both as is necessary to enable him to win in spite of them.-Roosevelt.

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman; but he, like his great-grandfather, the silent prince who founded the Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among warriors.-MACAULAY.

Still he is poet and philosopher even more than orator.—THACKERAY. To be accurate on this head is not less my intention than it is my interest.-CURRAN.

7. The predicate is followed by a dependent sentence defining the idea of the predicate.

I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my clearing.-THOREAU.

Whereupon your friend, unless he is a very unreasonable man, agrees with you and is convinced that you are quite right in the conclusion you have drawn.-HUXLEY.

8. A dependent sentence is the direct object of the verb in the main sentence.

A person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in Nature, applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery.-HUXLEY.

In all cases, you see that the value of the result depends on the patience and faithfulness with which the investigator applies to his hypothesis every kind of verification.-HUXLEY.

Frequently a dependent sentence is in apposition with some part of the main sentence.

There are two great defects in the working of the English theory that a gentleman must never, under any circumstances, have worked with his hands.-T. W. HIGGINSON.

Sometimes the dependent sentence is in the form of a direct quotation.

...

you arrive at your final

And, by the help of further reasoning, determination: "I will not have that apple."-HUXLEY.

66

CONDITIONED STATEMENT.

5. Definition; Fundamental Structure. The term "condition" is used here with a wide range of meaning. It includes not only the condition proper, usually expressed by "if," but also the relation of cause and effect, chronological

dependence, concession, comparison, and still other modes of dependence, for which there are no apt terms of designation, but which can be felt and estimated. For example:

If it rains to-morrow, we shall stay at home.

When I had finished reading, I went out for a walk.

Discovering that they had taken the wrong path, they retraced their steps.
However diligent he may be, he will scarcely win the prize.
Though highly gifted, he has not sufficient application.

The fundamental principle in all such constructions is that the complete sentence consists of two members, each of which is almost a complete sentence. The two members together make up the sentence-unit, and the dependence of one member on the other is the sentence-thought.

Each member has the fundamental structure of the unconditioned statement, that is, it has subject and verb, and may have also object (direct, indirect), adverbial modifiers, etc. Consequently each member must be constructed according to the principles which govern the unconditioned statement. On the other hand, the two members must be so adjusted to each other that the relation of dependence shall be expressed unmistakably. Herein lies the difficulty peculiar to this structure of sentence.'

6. Specimens of Conditioned Statement.

1. Condition proper; hypothesis.

If Hamlet could have stopped there, he would have been a Greek. -JEBB.

If any general rule could be laid down for marking these limits, it would be this, that the state should not invade one man's rights in order to protect another's.-D. D. FIELD.

If he [Swift] was the husband of Stella, his conduct to Miss Vanhomrigh admits of no defence—it was unmanly and dishonorable. If he was

1 This doctrine of sentence-members, though not incompatible with the clause-theory of the ordinary English grammar, for example, Whitney, Essentials, chap. xiv., pursues a different object. However useful for grammatical analysis it may be to classify various conditioning statements as clauses, the process does not help any one to write well. Whereas the object of the method here set forth is to enforce unity and clearness of sentencestructure, the foundation of correct writing.