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INTRODUCTION.

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O write an essay or any formal kind of composition seems to most people, and doubtless is, a much more difficult thing than to converse. But why should it be so? At bottom it is virtually the same thing, except that it is done with a pen instead of with the voice. The purpose too is the same, namely, to make others see a subject as the author sees it; and it ought to be just as natural, just as spontaneous, just as characteristic of the man, to write his thoughts as to speak them. If we could always bear this obvious truth in mind, and feel perfectly at ease with a pen in our hand, composition would cease to be the bugbear that it now too often is.

There is a good reason,

What Composition requires. however, which we ought not to ignore, why composition must in the nature of the case be more difficult than conversation. It is because in composing we have to be more careful and painstaking. We cannot, for one thing, be so off-hand about the words we use and the manner in which we put them together; we must take thought for choice and arrangement, because what we write is intended for a permanent expression of our thought, and we have no opportunity afterward to explain or correct our blunders. Nor again will it answer to throw out our ideas at random just as they chance to

occur to us; we need to devise some order for them which will help the reader to follow them readily from point to point and to recall them afterward. Further, as our subject may be hard, or our reader slow to grasp it, we must often study how to express ourselves with such emphasis or animation, such copiousness or pointedness, as will most surely engage his attention and give our thought a lodgment in his mind. Many such necessary things belong to the art of putting our ideas on paper, and of course make composition a more studied and calculated work, and in this sense more difficult, though in its real nature it remains the same as speaking.

Rhetoric: its Definition and Aim. Now when the words, the sentences, the plan, the various details of composition, are skilfully adapted to produce their proper and intended effect, we say the work has rhetorical qualities. Rhetoric, therefore, is the art of expressing our thoughts with skill, of giving to our composition the qualities that it ought to have in order to accomplish its author's design.

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For every author, if he works wisely, works with a specific design in view; a determinate object which he is aiming by his writing to effect. That object may merely to give his readers plain information, as in a letter or a report or a history; it may be to amuse and entertain, as in a sketch or a story; it may be to arouse, animate, convince, as in an oration or an argument. A variety of such objects, general and particular, might be mentioned, which however need not detain us now. For the present it is sufficient to say, as was said at the beginning, that the writer's paramount purpose, in whatever he writes, is to make others see a subject as he sees

it, — with the same clearness, the same fulness, the same power, the same beauty.

The Art of Rhetoric.

Rightly to do this is an art,

to be mastered by study and practice. It requires like all arts trained skill and wise contrivance to adapt means to ends. Like all arts too it suffers from lack of skill. and from neglect of care and practice. Its working-tools are words, phrases, sentences, figures, which are employed in endless ways to produce great varieties of effect. Its sphere is the mind of the reader, which must as occasion calls be not only instructed but interested and otherwise moved to feeling or action. It has its lower and elementary stages, comprising the procedures that lie at the foundation of all composition, things which it is not so much an honor to know as a reproach not to know; these are what the present treatise is mainly concerned with. It has also its higher and finer effects of style, or of individual skill and peculiarity; these, however, the author, if he starts rightly, can best be trusted to find out by his own invention. A very fascinating art, to one who has become interested in it; very practical, too, for it is in the large sense the art of making literature.

Problems of the Art. Every art has its peculiar problems to solve; the problems of the art of rhetoric are of two kinds.

First, and lying at the beginning, are problems of usage. Many of our rules for the choice of words and for the putting of them together we get from long established custom or from the custom of the best writers. This prevailing usage may in some cases be arbitrary or irregular; but the fact that it is usage makes it the law of correctness; to follow it is right, to transgress it is

wrong. A great part of our apprenticeship to the art of rhetoric consists in familiarizing ourselves with what usage dictates.

Secondly, and much more consonant with the idea of art, there are problems of adaptation and fitness. To write with rhetorical skill is more than to write correctly: a sentence may be perfectly correct, perfectly conformable to usage, and yet for this particular place and work be a very poor sentence. In correcting it we do not ask what is right and what is wrong; that question was answered in getting the sentence grammatical; we ask rather what is better and what not so good for our purpose. That is the art of it: to find the best means and employ them, to replace what is feeble or vague or heavy by what is strong and definite and direct.

Of these two classes of problems, the second dominates. What is constantly present to the writer's mind is the question of producing certain effects, and of contriving the best means to that end. Questions of usage come in as a matter of course, as something which must be obeyed, but the observance of which should be second

nature.

Field of the Art. The six chapters that make up this book, which also cover in a compendious way the field of the rhetorical art, naturally fall into two groups of three.

1. The first group, which may be entitled Mastery of Materials, deals with the matters that are most constant and require most drill. In these chapters there is little question of a constructed and completed whole; the question is rather of words, idioms, grammatical requirements, and figures, wherein we must find and follow prevailing usage,

and whereby we may work certain specific effects in style. The group comprises:

Chapter I. The Choice of Words, with reference to saying exactly what we mean to say, in accordance with good usage and good taste.

Chapter II. Phraseology: how to put words together, especially with reference to grammatical correctness and clearness.

Chapter III. Special Objects in Style: how to choose words and put them together so as to produce the effects we seek, of special strength, or vividness, or grace.

2. The second group, which may be entitled Organization of Materials, deals with the various processes involved in composition. In these chapters the question is always of construction: how to fit part and part together, how to accumulate and balance details so as to build up an organic whole. They are:

Chapter IV. The Sentence, which is the first organized form that our thoughts assume.

Chapter V. The Paragraph, which contains in miniature the characteristics of the whole discourse.

Chapter VI. The Whole Composition; with the procedures belonging both to discourse as a whole and to its various forms.

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