SECTION VIL

WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

The general principles on which WHOLE COMPOSITIONS should be framed are the same for a paper of two or three pages as for a book of several volumes.

Clearness and

To secure clearness and force in a composition as a whole, it is necessary not only to make each paragraph clear and forcible, but also to arrange all the paragraphs in a clear and effective order, the force. order that accords with the sequence of thought and that holds the reader's interest from beginning to end. If this order is followed, each paragraph will be in the place where it belongs, the only place in which it can stand without injury to the total impression.

Ease.

To secure ease in a composition as a whole, it is necessary not only to give ease to each paragraph, but also to make the transition from paragraph to paragraph without jar. Too much attention can hardly be paid to the manner of getting from one paragraph to another. A master of the art of transition begins and ends each paragraph so as to make it grow out of the last and into the next; he moves so easily and naturally that the reader follows without being aware of the steps he is taking.

To secure unity in a composition as a whole, it is necessary not only to make each paragraph a unit, but also to make all the paragraphs together con- Unity.

stitute a whole, as all the sentences in each

paragraph constitute a smaller whole.

"Every man, as he walks through the streets," says De Quincey, "may contrive to jot down an independent thought, a shorthand

memorandum of a great truth. . . . Standing on one leg you may accomplish this. The labour of composition begins when you have to put your separate threads of thought into a loom; to weave them into a continuous whole; to connect, to introduce them; to blow them out or expand them; to carry them to a close."

A good writer sees his subject as a whole and treats it as a whole. However abundant his material (and the more of it he has the better), he presents it as a unit. Sometimes he effects this by giving prominence to one idea, and grouping other ideas about that in subordinate positions, digressions, if made at all, being distinctly marked as digressions. Always he observes the laws of proportion, and thus gives to each part the space it should occupy relatively to every other part and to the whole.

"True proportion in a building,” writes Mr. Palgrave, “answers to the general scheme or plot of a poem (as exemplified especially in narrative or dramatic works), and, further, to the sense of unity which all good art conveys; whilst the ornamental details in each should always be felt by eye and mind to bud and flower out, as if by necessity, from the main object of the design." 2

Unity means one thing in one kind of composition, another in another; but every piece of writing which purports to be complete in itself should, whatever its length, its subject-matter, or its purpose, be a whole. Essays like those of Montaigne, in which no pretence of composition is made, the writer rambling on as he would do in familiar conversation or in family letters, are the only writings which do not require unity, or rather which

1 De Quincey: Essay on Style. Examples both of the evil effects of shirking the "labour of composition," and also of the excellent effects of performing that labor, are to be found in De Quincey's own writings.

2 F. T. Palgrave: Poetry compared with the other Fine Arts. The National Review, July, 1886, p. 635.

require no unity except that created by the personality of the writer. It is the personality of the writer that binds together Emerson's least consecutive pages. This kind of unity we should not expect to find in the great majority of compositions. What we have a right to look for in them is unity in the conception of the subject and in its treatment: unity of thought and unity of expression.

"Composition," says Ruskin, "means, literally and simply, putting several things together, so as to make one thing out of them; the nature and goodness of which they all have a share in producing. Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes together in certain relations; a poet composes a poem, by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colours in pleasant order.

"In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of composition. A paviour cannot be said to compose the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected with it."1

What unity is not, every teacher of composition knows by sad experience. Every teacher has had papers pass through his hands not unlike the following composition, which purports to be written by young Mr. Brown and is printed by Cardinal Newman as a typical example of writing only too common in schools and colleges:

"FORTES FORTUNA ADJUVAT.'

"Of all the uncertain and capricious powers which rule our earthly destiny, fortune is the chief. Who has not heard of the poor being raised up, and the rich being laid low? Alexander the Great said he envied Diogenes in his tub, because Diogenes could have nothing less. We need not go far for an instance of fortune. 1 Ruskin: The Elements of Drawing, letter iii.

Who was so great as Nicholas, the Czar of all the Russias, a year ago, and now he is "fallen, fallen from his high estate, without a friend to grace his obsequies.' "1 The Turks are the finest specimen of the human race, yet they, too, have experienced the vicissitudes of fortune. Horace says that we should wrap ourselves in our vir tue, when fortune changes. Napoleon, too, shows us how little we can rely on fortune; but his faults, great as they were, are being redeemed by his nephew, Louis Napoleon, who has shown himself very different from what we expected, though he has never explained how he came to swear to the Constitution, and then mounted the imperial throne.

"From all this it appears, that we should rely on fortune or ly while it remains, — recollecting the words of the thesis, "Fortes fortuna adjuvat;" and that, above all, we should ever cultivate those virtues which will never fail us, and which are a sure basis of respectability, and will profit us here and hereafter.’·

"Mr. Black, to whom the boy's admiring father submits the composition for criticism, comments upon it as follows:

"There's not one word of it upon the thesis; but all boys write in this way.

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"Now look here,' he says, 'the subject is "Fortes fortuna adjuvat; now this is a proposition; it states a certain general principle, and this is just what an ordinary boy would be sure to miss, and Robert does miss it. He goes off at once on the word "fortuna.' "Fortuna " was not his subject; the thesis was intended to guide him, for his own good; he refuses to be put into leading-strings; he breaks loose, and runs off in his own fashion on the broad field and in wild chase of "fortune," instead of closing with the subject, which, as being definite, would have supported him.

"It would have been very cruel to have told a boy to write on "fortune; "it would have been like asking him his opinion of "things in general." Fortune is "good," "bad," "capricious," 'unexpected," ten thousand things all at once (you see them all in the Gradus), and one of them as much as the other. Ten thousand things may be said of it: give me one of them, and I will write upon it; I cannot write on more than one; Robert prefers to write upon all.

1 "Here again Mr. Brown prophesies. He wrote in June, 1854."

"They [boys] do not rouse up their attention and reflect: they do not like the trouble of it: they cannot look at any thing steadily; and, when they attempt to write, off they go in a rigmarole of words, which does them no good, and never would, though they scribbled themes till they wrote their fingers off.

"Now, I know how this Theme was written,' he says, 'first one sentence, and then your boy sat thinking, and devouring the end of his pen; presently down went the second, and so on. The rule is, first think, and then write: don't write when you have nothing to say; or, if you do, you will make a mess of it. A thoughtful youth may deliver himself clumsily, he may set down little; but depend upon it, his half sentences will be worth more than the folio sheet of another boy, and an experienced examiner will see it.

"Now, I will prophesy one thing of Robert, unless this fault is knocked out of him,' continues merciless Mr. Black. When he grows up, and has to make a speech, or write a letter for the papers, he will look out for flowers, full-blown flowers, figures, smart expressions, trite quotations, hackneyed beginnings and endings, pompous circumlocutions, and so on: but the meaning, the sense, the solid sense, the foundation, you may hunt the slipper long enough before you catch it.'” 1

Cardinal Newman's method of securing unity holds for us all. We should "first think, and then write:" think till we have thoroughly assimilated our materials and have determined what we would say, and then write as rapidly as possible, with minds not occupied with choice of word or turn of phrase but intent on the subject. After the first draught has been made, we may at leisure attend to matters of detail, criticise from various points of view, curtail here, amplify there, until each part has its due proportion of space and effectiveness; but unless we have a conception of the whole before beginning to write, and unless we write with an eye to that whole, there is little likelihood that our work will be a unit.

1 Cardinal Newman: The Idea of a University; University Subjects, Elementary Studies.