a careful student can find much to say on either side without sacrificing his self-respect. There is nothing about this branch of rhetoric that exempts it from the principles of candor and fair play that prevail among gentlemen. To make the worse appear the better reason is not argument but sophistry.

CHAPTER XIII

WORDS

Language is fossil poetry. - EMERSON.

He that is wise in words shall make himself beloved.

Structure and style. Of the expression of thought in language we have hitherto considered chiefly but one element, structure. Structure means building. We mean by it the frame of the house, the sills and joists and studs and plates and rafters, the struts and ties and braces, but not the siding or the clapboards or the shingles or the lath and plaster. Or structure may be compared to the skeleton with its attached cartilages and tendons, but without the inclosing tissues that depend upon it for support. By structure in rhetoric we mean the organization of thought; the choice and arrangement of ideas in order to put things where they belong.

This process of planning the structure of a composition, to which so much of our attention has hitherto been given, is really an affair wholly of the mind, not of the tongue or pen; that is, it is determined by the quantity and quality of the thinking we do before we begin to speak or to write. Its expression is the analytical outline. With the exception of the assignments on friendly letters, informal speeches, and colloquial English, all the emphasis has been laid on structure. The main aim has been clearness. Our one chief concern was to use words so precise, sentences so compact, paragraphs so logically constructed and connected, that our thought could be

understood; or rather, that it could not be misunderstood. The acme of this sort of writing is the familiar sign :

RAILWAY CROSSING

STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!

To make language unmistakably clear is not so easy as it seems. People who write their own wills, legislators who try to evade constitutions, and treaty-makers who try to anticipate future contingencies, often fail even here. But there is another element in composition which is equally important and much more difficult,

style.

Style is more than Dean Swift's "the proper words in the proper place." It is our way of saying things. Ten men writing from the same analytical outline will have identical structure, but they will all have different styles; just as ten artists painting the same landscape, or portraits of the same person, will all produce different pictures. Ten cameras will give landscapes or portraits differing only in mechanical details; ten brushes or pencils will make pictures different in spirit, temper, interpretation. Every artist has his style. "The style is the man.”

Now it is evident that structure is a more or less mechanical thing that can be mastered by any intelligent person. By such methods of analysis and arrangement of material as were explained in Chapters I and II, any student can learn to make a good outline. Most students can, if they revise often enough, make an outline that is practically perfect. But style is no such simple matter. There is no open or secret method of acquiring it in so many lessons. Good style is the result of much reading, much writing, much rewriting, much thought. Style is a matter of degree: everybody has some style; only the great masters can properly be said to have perfect styles. When we say of a poor writer, "He has no style,” we do not mean just what we say. It would be like saying that a man has no way of walking, no manner of dress, no fashion of eat

ing his dinner. We really mean that he has a bad style, or fragments of many bad styles, with neither beauty nor even an original kind of ugliness. When we say, on the other hand, that a writer has a fine style, we may mean the elaborate prose rhythms of Ruskin, or the crystal simplicity of Newman. We may mean a vivid, pictorial kind of scientific style like Professor James's, or a plain kind like Huxley's. In every case we mean that the man has a way of saying things which marks him off from other men, and is in itself admirable. His style

is good, and it is his. It has fitness for the writer, fitness for the reader, and fitness for the thought. He has made it, and it has made him.

The means of winning interest. Style depends on various factors. One element in it is euphony, another is vividness, another is variety. Sentences and words must sound well, must be full of pictures, must rest and refresh the ear by contrast. The chief aim of this euphony, vividness, and variety is not clearness; it is interest. We aim now not merely to be understood, but to be liked. We desire not only that men shall grasp our meaning if they care to listen, but also that they shall be made to care. The ambition of the man who wrote the railway sign is satisfied if he has made sure that "he who runs may read." If he can keep absentminded drivers and "joy-riders" off the tracks when trains are due, he has earned his pay. But the story-writer, the orator, the familiar essayist, the dramatist, has a harder task. "He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner," says Sir Philip Sidney. He must please the children better than their play, and warm the old men's hearts like a Christmas fire. It may be his task to charm timid innocence into a daring resolve, or to kindle smoldering passion into a destroying flame. He may use his style to tell his own secrets, or to force other men 'to confess theirs. His is the knowledge of good and evil, the secret of sympathy, the key to the will: interest. If he

would command, he must serve. If he would lead, he must follow. He that writes practices an art; and the aim of all art is, in the noblest sense, to please.

Good style in the general sense. Now the pleasure or interest which great literature possesses is in large part the result of the great ideas out of which it grows. Concerning those sources of beauty in books which arise from their contents, the student will be constantly learning in his study of literature. The form cannot be divorced from the content, the body from the spirit. Style for style's sake is an abomination. Yet if a student who never has great ideas, and never expects to have any, is to attempt to better his own style, he can do it in no other way than to put into practice in writing what he observes in reading. For style is not only individual but social. There is the individual style, and there is the general style; just as there is a German script, which every German writes with his own personal peculiarities. Each language has a style of its own. There is the French style, the German,

the Hebrew.

Each age has its style, its fashions in sentenceform and vocabulary. It is therefore evident that the student must to some extent model his style on the best general style of his age and country, while he is at the same time trying to develop individual expression.

An art student draws casts a long time before he is admitted to the life class; and he must show proficiency at working from the model before he can do much with composition. Children learning to write follow the copy with scrupulous care in the effort to imitate the standard; only when they are grown is it desirable that they should allow their handwriting to develop a certain freedom and variation from the pattern. In composition work the two sorts of training go on side by side. The student begins by learning those things which are common to all good writers and all good styles; but he continues, if he has the natural bent and the industry to continue, by developing those peculiar powers of his own which gradually