It sins more seriously against force by telling what the painting is the more interesting and important factbefore telling what it is not. The forcible order is usually that which moves from the negative to the positive; but when, as in the following example, a writer wishes to emphasize the negative rather than the positive assertion, the reverse order is preferable :

"He is a man after all," thought I; "his Maker's own truest image, a philanthropic man!—not that steel engine of the Devil's contrivance, a philanthropist !"— HAWTHORNE.

I

Hazlitt's essays should be valued, not as steady instruction, but as suggestive points of departure; not as a study-lamp, but as brilliant flashes of light.

II

Hazlitt's essays should be valued as brilliant flashes of light, not as a study lamp; as suggestive points of departure, not as steady instruction.

The sentence under II is weak in two ways: it puts the positive assertions before the negative, and the figurative expression before the literal. The forcible order is that which moves, not only from the negative to the positive, but from the literal to the figurative.1

The best way of learning how to apply the principle of climax effectively is to study its application in the works of good authors. For example: —

The secret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean.

HAWTHORNE.

Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his becomes a ruin. — IRVING.

very monument

He was made Secretary of the Treasury; and how he fulfilled the duties of such a place at such a time, the whole country perceived with delight, and the whole world saw with admiration. He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. - DANIEL WEBSTER.

1 See the extract from Macaulay, on pages 345-346.

Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. — MACAULAY.

Each of these passages gains in force by an arrangement which carries the reader onward, step by step, from the less to the more effective. In the passage from Macaulay, the first paragraph presents an excellent example of climax, the second of antithesis.

EXERCISE CLXXXIII

Point out the antitheses and climaxes:

1. Woman is not a slave but a wise ruler in the household, and1 not a toy but a being whom all just men respect. — STUDENT'S THEME. 2. In a vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only disgust. But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect was to add pity to admiration and esteem. - MACAULAY.

3. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion. - POE. 4. Where we compared, they were absurd; where we contrasted, they were monstrous. — GEORGE Meredith.

5. I have not a thing to say; nothing is of more importance than another; I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge Park's wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it; a cipher, an O! — LAMB.

6. The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the

1 Is this word necessary?

testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. NEWMAN.

7. Although an old, consistent exile, the editor of the following pages revisits now and again the city of which he exults to be a native; and there are few things more strange, more painful, or more salutary, than such revisitations. Outside, in foreign spots, he comes by surprise and awakens more attention than he had expected; in his own city, the relation is reversed, and he stands amazed to be so little recollected. Elsewhere he is refreshed to see attractive faces, to remark possible friends; there he scouts the long streets, with a pang at heart, for the faces and friends that are no more. Elsewhere he is delighted with the presence of what is new, there tormented by the absence of what is old. Elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he is smitten with an equal regret for what he once was and for what he once hoped to be.

- STEVENSON.

8. From the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night – from the pathetic blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight, from the manly tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring love-suddenly as from the woods and fields— suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in revelation— suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice.1— DE QUINCEY.

EXERCISE CLXXXIV

Rewrite each sentence in such a way as to bring out the antithesis plainly :

1. We had not seen Thoreau's Walden, but the Walden we had seen was worth while.

2. I should prefer heavier furniture, but this just suits Simpson's

taste.

3. Meredith constantly adapts his style to his subject, but his reader he assumes to be like himself.

4. What is novel will always please and interest; a merely new thing is often distasteful.

1 A good example of a sentence that is almost, but not wholly, periodic (see pages 376–377).

5. We must see at the outset that just as Macaulay's style is Especially adapted for the essay on Clive, so Carlyle is particularly fitted to consider the career of Johnson.

6. In the little silver jug was cream, milk was in the larger one.

7. We found it easy enough to climb up, but the descent was not

so easy.

8. He is said to be rather forbidding to strangers, but it is known that he is very kind to his own family.

EXERCISE CLXXXV

Arrange each sentence in the order of climax :

1. He trusted that he should conquer by the help of heaven and his powerful right arm.

2. That event would usher in a crisis, a series of crises, and certainly not a lull.

3. He was notable for his moral worth, his patriotism, and his excellent handwriting.

4. Jerome obeyed his mother with the patient obedience of a superior who yields because his opponent is weaker than he and a struggle beneath his dignity, not because he is actually coerced.

5. We have been free from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday; it is true we have had some chicken-pox and some measles.

In the choice, in the number, and in the order of words, aim at force.

CHAPTER V

EASE

L. IMPORTANCE OF EASE

THE importance of that quality of expression which makes a piece of writing pleasant to read need not be dwelt on. It is this quality which gives preeminence to Dryden, Addison, Goldsmith, Irving, Hawthorne, Thackeray, and Newman as masters of style. These men of genius have the happy faculty of taking the reader from word to word, from sentence to sentence, from paragraph to paragraph, so easily that he finds a pleasure in the printed page not unlike that which he finds in a strain of music or in a beautiful landscape. With such men, ease is in large part the gift of nature, the expression of an attractive personality.

Ease of expression in this its highest form few of us can expect to secure. It will come to us, if it come at all, not as the result of conscious effort (for in language, as in manners, apparent effort is fatal to ease), but as an incidental result of a sincere purpose to express in the best English at our command what we really think and feel. We may, however, remove obstacles that unnecessarily increase the natural difficulties in the use of language as a means of communication: we may (1) avoid disagreeable sounds and clumsy expressions, (2) use as many words as are needed but no more, and (3) arrange words, phrases, and clauses in such a manner that the flow of thought will not be obstructed by offensive peculiarities in expression. We should never be satisfied with a first draft, but should revise and revise, with constant attention to details, until the ear and the taste have been gradually