APPENDIX A

KINDS OF COMPOSITION 1

EVERYTHING written or spoken, from the theme of a schoolboy to the work of a great author, may, according to the main purpose in view, be considered under one of four heads DESCRIPTION, NarraTION, EXPOSITION, or ARGUMENT. In DESCRIPTION a writer undertakes to represent persons or things, seen or imagined; in NARRATION he tells a story; in EXPOSITION he expounds, or explains, some subject; in ARGUMENT he reasons from one proposition to another. Not that there is a hard and fast line separating one of these kinds of composition from the rest; they often run into one another. In "Silas Marner," for example, although the book as a whole is a narrative, George Eliot every now and then describes the personages or the scenes in her story, explains the meaning of this or that action or the motives of this or that character, expounds her own views or opinions, or argues from the known to the unknown.

DESCRIPTION

THE general purpose of description is to bring before the mind of a reader or a listener persons or things as they would appear if he were looking at them. Pure description is rarely found alone: "No two human beings," according to Stevenson, "ever talked of landscape for three minutes together." 2 There are works, to be sure, such as books of travel, in which description plays the most important part; but usually it is combined with something else, to which it is subordinate. Scientific Description. A description may aim to convey information and nothing more, to analyze an object in order to enable us to identify it by comparing it part by part with the description. This kind of description, called SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTION, is employed not only in works of science, but also in passports, inventories, title-deeds, 1 TO TEACHERS. - This part of the book, though primarily intended to aid in the appreciation of literature, may also be of service in the work of composition. For a fuller treatment of the subjects discussed under this head, see A. S. Hill's" Principles of Rhetoric," revised edition, Part II.

2 J. H. Gardiner: The Forms of Prose Literature.

and advertisements of lost dogs, escaped criminals, etc. A good ex ample appears in one of Charles Lamb's shorter essays:

...

Run away from his bail, John Tomkins. . . . He is a thickset, sturdy man, about five foot six inches high, halts in his left leg, with a stoop in his gait, with coarse red hair, nose short and cocked up, with little grey eyes, one of them bears the effect of a blow which he has lately received, with a pot belly, speaks with a thick and disagreeable voice, goes shabbily drest, had on when he went away a greasy shag great coat with rusty yellow buttons.

Nowadays such a description would probably be accompanied by a photograph; for a photograph, a drawing, or a model can represent a person or a thing more vividly than the best description can do. A picture or a model, like the object which it represents, shows us each part in its relations with the other parts,- that is, as a whole; whereas the only way in which words can give a complete idea of a whole is by a description of the parts. To make a whole of these parts, the reader or the hearer must put them together; and he may forget the first part before he reaches the last one.

On the other hand, a scientific description may give details that would not appear in a photograph, a drawing, or a model. Even the most accurate painting of a spider, for example, can give no such information about the spider's characteristics and habits as Goldsmith gives in the following passage from one of his essays:

This insect is formed by nature for a state of war, not only upon other insects, but upon each other. For this state nature seems perfectly well to have formed it. Its head and breast are covered with a strong natural coat of mail, which is impenetrable to the attempts of every other insect, and its belly is enveloped in a soft, pliant skin, which eludes the sting even of a wasp. Its legs are terminated by strong claws, not unlike those of a lobster, and their vast length, like spears, serve to keep every assailant at a distance.

Not worse furnished for observation than for an attack or a defence, it has several eyes, large, transparent, and covered with an horny substance, which, however, does not impede its vision. Besides this, it is furnished with a forceps above the mouth, which serves to kill or secure the prey already caught in its claws or its net.

This description not being sufficient for the purpose in hand, Goldsmith goes on, in his essay, to give an account of the way in which spiders spin their webs, - that is, to write an exposition. Then he

tells the story of his observations of a particular spider; that is, he writes a narrative.

Artistic Description. — A description may do more than merely give useful information; it may affect the imagination, or it may inspire the reader with the emotions which the writer himself felt while looking at the object he is talking about. This kind of description, as distinguished in purpose from scientific description, may be called ARTISTIC DESCRIPTION. It is exemplified in the following passage about the dawn in a deserted Indian city, from Mr. Kipling's "Naulahka": :

The loom of the night lifted a little, and he could see the outline of some great building a few yards away. Beyond this were other shadows, faint as the visions in a dream the shadows of yet more temples and lines of houses; the wind, blowing among them, brought back a rustle of tossing hedges.

The shadows grew more distinct: he could see that he was standing with his face to some decayed tomb. Then his jaw fell, for, without warning or presage, the red dawn shot up behind him, and there leaped out of the night the city of the dead. Tall-built, sharp-domed palaces, flushing to the colour of blood, revealed the horror of their emptiness, and glared at the day that pierced them through and through.

The wind passed singing down the empty streets, and, finding none to answer, returned, chasing before it a muttering cloud of dust.

A screen of fretted marble lay on the dry grass, where it had fallen from some window above, and a gecko crawled over it to sun himself. Already the dawn flush had passed. The hot light was everywhere, and a kite had poised himself in the parched blue sky. The day, new-born, might have been as old as the city. It seemed to Tarvin that he and it were standing still to hear the centuries race by on the wings of the purposeless dust.

For a description like this, words are better than a drawing. In the best paintings, to be sure, you can almost feel the atmosphere, - its heaviness or its clearness, as the case may be; if a windy day is pictured, you seem to feel the wind and to hear it blow, as well as to see its effects. There are pictures of camp fires or of hearth fires so real that they seem to make you smell the smoke. Such suggestions a painting may give; but even the best picture can convey the impressions of a single moment only, for the eye cannot receive impressions of two successive moments at once. Thus, no picture can, like Mr. Kipling's description, make shadows grow more and more distinct,

till the red dawn shoots up, and then the sun itself, sending its hot light everywhere, and making even the sky, which has changed from gray to blue, seem parched.

Observation.

Whoever writes an effective description chooses for his subject something that he is familiar with. No one can describe a person or a thing that he has not seen either in fact or in imagination; and no one can describe well what he sees unless, in obedience to Wordsworth's rule, he has his "eye on the object" described. All description, then, implies observation.

Movement. A skilful writer of description may not only use words in such a way as to give his readers sensations that are merely suggested by a picture, but may also so use them as to indicate motion. One way of doing this is to throw the description into the form of a narrative, a method employed by Longfellow in his "Building of the Ship.” Instead of describing the ship floating on the water with sails and rigging all in place, he represents the whole process of construction. Akin to this method is that which Scott uses in "The Lady of the Lake" in describing four boats. He represents these with all that they carry, not as they would look in a picture, but as they would look to one who saw them gradually approaching :

Far up the lengthen'd lake were spied
Four darkening specks upon the tide,
That, slow enlarging on the view,
Four mann'd and masted barges grew,
And, bearing downwards from Glengyle,
Steer'd full upon the lonely isle;
The point of Brianchoil they pass'd,
And, to the windward as they cast,
Against the sun they gave to shine
The bold Sir Roderick's banner'd Pine.
Nearer and nearer as they bear,
Spear, pikes, and axes flash in air.
Now might you see the tartans brave,

And plaids and plumage dance and waves
Now see the bonnets sink and rise,
As his tough oar the rower plies;
See, flashing at each sturdy stroke,
The wave ascending into smoke;
See the proud pipers on the bow,
And mark the gaudy streamers flow.

Unity. In description there should be something more than observation and movement; there should be unity. In artistic description, the best way to secure this quality is to make the reader feel the general effect produced on the writer by what he is seeking to describe. While looking at an object, a person is necessarily thrown into some mood, it may be of aversion, it may be of enthusiastic admiration, or it may be of indifference; and that mood, with its attendant emotions, he should, in describing the object, try to recall so vividly that he will throw his readers or hearers into a similar mood. Thus Mr. Austin Dobson, in his description of a playground in Van der Venne's headpiece for Jacob Cats's " Kinder-spel" ("Children's Games"), shows us the scene as it affected him:

Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of children, playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing buboles, whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping and the like. In one corner the boys are busy with blind man's buff; in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and vandyked aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump some seventeenth century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to be going on vigorously; and, not to be behindnand in the fun, two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, and – so conservative is childhood-might, but for the costume and scene, represent a playground of to-day. No doubt it represented, with far closer fidelity, the playground of the artist's time.

Arrangement. Unless the details in a description are given in regular, rational order, the description will seem confused. A careful writer, therefore, makes his point of view always plain to the reader; if he changes it, he informs the reader of the change. An admirable description in which the writer keeps one point of view, and arranges the details of the scene in the order in which they would naturally appear to an observer, occurs in Hawthorne's "Marble Faun":

From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, toward the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum (where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a shapeless confusion of modern edifices, piled rudely up