easily from one to the other. An examination of any well written article in a magazine or book will show how careful the writer has been to indicate the connection of thought from paragraph to paragraph.

3. Emphasis and Proportion. Emphasis in the whole composition, as in the paragraph, requires that important topics should occupy important places. The most important place is at the end; for here the mind of the reader, having become centered on the thought, and attuned to the spirit of the discourse, receives its lasting and naturally strongest impression. In serious discourse of an expository or argumentative nature the emphatic arrangement will be that which puts the most important topic last.

The length of treatment of the several topics depends on their importance. Unimportant matters that can be left to the reader's own knowledge or imagination should be passed over rapidly. Important matters must receive extended consideration, dependent on the length of the composition. In an essay of one thousand words no topic can receive as full consideration as in one of four or five thousand words. Therefore in applying the principle of proportion to our composition we must be governed by the importance of the several topics and the space at our command.

EXERCISES.

1. How should you describe the relation of a composition to its several parts? Explain how the same principles of style apply equally well to the several parts of the com

position and to the whole. For what purpose are these principles applied? How far will due attention to the choice of words, to well-constructed sentences and paragraphs, contribute to a well-constructed composition as a whole ? What further attention is necessary?

2. Why is a definite plan for a composition helpful? Why is it not possible to rely on natural expression for an orderly treatment of any subject? What do you understand by organic divisions of thought? What must be true of them if they are to form an organized whole Upon what general line should you make a plan for each of the four kinds of discourse?

3. Choose five of the following subjects, and make a plan for each suitable for a composition of 300, 400, or 500 words.

4. Select four articles from papers or magazines, make a plan of each, bring to the class, and comment upon them with reference to orderly arrangement. Make any suggestions that you think will improve the plan. Justify or criticise the plans of the several compositions in Appendix C.

5. In what kinds of writing should you expect the simplest introduction? In what, the most formal? What general directions should you give for an introduction? For a conclusion? What purpose does each serve? Write suitable introductions and conclusions for the five subjects chosen under exercise 3. Show how each is appropriate to its subject. Bring to the class a number

of introductions and conclusions of articles in the magazines, and show how each is appropriate to the article in question.

6. How should you define unity as applied to the whole composition? Describe briefly how it may be attained. Why is it impossible to preserve unity in writing on general subjects? How should you apply the principle of coherence to a composition? Explain the importance of good paragraph connection, and show how may be attained.

it

7. How should you apply the principles of emphasis and proportion to a composition? In the articles which you have examined from papers and magazines, have the authors applied these principles to good advantage? If so, show how. If not, criticise the articles with reference to these principles.

8. For each of the subjects which you chose under exercise 3 make a plan for a composition of 1000 to 1500

words.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FORMS OF LITERATURE AND METHODS OF TREATMENT.

127. The Forms of Discourse. We have seen in Chapter XI. that writings are arbitrarily divided into several groups according to the nature of the subject matter. In this chapter we shall discuss the forms of discourse as grouped in two classes according to the mode of literary treatment. Considering briefly the several literary forms of which Chapter XI. treats, we may say that, in general, exposition and argumentation are forms requiring full statement of what the writer wishes the reader to know, and that the other threedescription, narration, and criticism are forms in which the author should suggest more than he tells. That there is some such broad natural division of all writing, on the basis of the sort of thinking involved, is at least suggested by the fact that, while sometimes one man is in a degree master of the various forms, it is generally true that a writer who is especially skillful in the first two is distinctly less so in the other three, and vice versa. Webster could explain and convince, but it would be difficult to think of his succeeding equally well in the art of the novelist. Thackeray delights us with work in description, narration, and criticism, but

in him no one would expect to find excellence in exposition or argumentation. George Eliot could, perhaps, be great in all forms.

128. The Literature of Full Statement.- Exposition assumes that the reader does not understand that which is to be explained, and it should generally assume that the reader's interest will not be so high, or his enjoyment of the explanation so great, that he will make the effort to fill out details that the writer omits. If the exposition is to be clear, it must reduce this effort to the lowest point possible. In argumentation this is even more important. The assumption in all argumentation is that the reader is to be convinced of a truth or a conclusion to which he does not give assent, and which, quite probably, he is unwilling to accept. Evidently, then, it will not be sufficient merely to make it possible for the reader to follow the meaning and reach the desired conclusion. The purpose of the writer being to convince the reader against his will, he must not leave out any detail of the course of the argument, he must not trust the reader to see the dependence of one thought upon another for himself, he must not make assertions which the reader may question. It is also as important to state facts which the reader may be supposed to know, if they bear upon the question, as those of which he is ignorant. Definitely brought to notice, they are especially effective, since there will be no inclination to dispute them left for the reader to supply, they may not be thought of, since at the best he is not trying to reach