Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ent sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, A have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Λ I took some of the tales in The Spectator, turned them into verse; A after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.

Λ

I sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the A best order I began to form the full sentences and complete Λ the subject. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts. By comparing my work with the original, I discovered many faults, and corrected them; ^ I sometimes had the pleasure to fancy that, in certain particulars of small consequence, I had been fortunate enough to improve the method or the language, ▲ this encouraged me to think that I might in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

Λ

CHAPTER IV.

SENTENCES.

Introduction.

34. Having studied the larger independent units of composition, and the smaller units, called paragraphs, of which they are composed, we are now ready to take up the still minuter elements that go to the making of paragraphs. These last are sentences.

Whether standing independently by itself or uniting with other related sentences to make a paragraph, every sentence should be a unit. Both for the reader and for the writer this is a principle of the greatest importance. In order that reader and writer may understand one another readily, each must recognize that the capital letter at the beginning and the period at the close always mark off a thought. The reader is disappointed if what is offered to him as a sentence is really only a piece of a sentence, or if two sentences are wrongfully united. All readers of novels are familiar with such a furious separation of things belonging together, as is seen in the following: "I acted as if I were angry. Though really I didn't mind what he said." This should be written, "I acted as if I were angry, though really I didn't mind what he said." Not uncommon are wrong combinations, as, "The rain was falling, therefore they hurried in," which is better written : "The rain was

66

66

falling. Therefore they hurried in," or still better, "Since the rain was falling, they hurried in."

Complex and Compound Sentences.

Does the senDoes it express

35. The question whether a thought should be expressed in simple sentences, or in a complex or a compound sentence, is a question of logic. tence say what it was intended to say? the relation, coördinate or subordinate, that the writer meant to express? In "I shouted to my companion to jump, and the danger was over," the two facts are joined in a compound sentence by the word "and,” as if they were coördinate; but a moment's reflection shows that the relation intended is a subordinate relation, and therefore demands a complex sentence for its true expression. We try, "I shouted to my companion to jump, — when the danger was over," but we find that now we have subordinated the principal statement. The sentence should read, "When I shouted to my companion to jump, the danger was over," or, "Before I could shout to my companion to jump, the danger was over." In short, the compound sentence must express a real, and not merely a pretended, coördination of ideas, and a complex sentence must express real subordination, putting the main idea in the principal clause and not in some modifier.

Danger of Overcrowding.

36. Even when the sentence is logical and all the details are relevant (as they are in the sentence below), there is danger of overcrowding. It is false economy to try to make one sentence tell too much, for then the main idea is harder to find.

Of the French town, properly so called, in which the product of successive ages, not without lively touches of the present, are blended together harmoniously with a beauty specific a beauty cisalpine and northern, yet at the same time quite distinct from the massive German picturesque of Ulm, or Freiburg, or Augsburg, and of which Turner has found the ideal in certain of his studies of the rivers of France, a perfectly happy conjunction of river and town being of the essence of its physiognomy. the town of Auxerre is perhaps the most complete realization to be found by the actual wanderer. - PATER.

Contrast with the illustration just given, the following letter by Abraham Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby of Boston. In this letter, each sentence stands for one clear thought; each goes straight to the mark; and a second reading is not needed for a definite understanding of the thoughts as they come along in orderly succession.

DEAR MADAM: —I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the adjutant general of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Very respectfully yours,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Long and Short Sentences.

37. Lowell's rule is worth remembering: "It was always present to my consciousness that whatever I said must be understood at once by my hearers, or never. Out of this I, almost without knowing it, formulated the rule that every sentence must be clear in itself, and never too long to be carried, without risk of losing its balance, on a single breath of the speaker.

[ocr errors]

As Lowell implies, the long sentence is more likely to become confused than the short sentence; but aside from this danger, the length of a sentence has nothing to do with its unity. The following sentence from Robert Louis Stevenson shows one way of unifying a long sentence; namely, by keeping the same form of statement for the parts that do the same work in the sentence.

To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little, to spend less; to make upon the whole a family happier by his presence; to renounce where that shall be necessary, and not to be embittered; to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation; above all, on the same grim conditions to keep friends with himself-here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.

Both long sentences and short sentences have their peculiar uses. These can best be understood by noticing them as they appear in combination in paragraphs. A short sentence among longer ones arrests attention by its very brevity, abruptness, and directness. Consequently, a topic statement, an important transition, or a summary will often be expressed in a short striking. sentence, the longer sentences being used for explana

« AnteriorContinuar »