of length is really a question of proportion. An extensive and unfamiliar subject naturally requires more preliminary explanation than one which is simple and generally understood. The introduction, then, reduced to its lowest terms, merely announces what is to be discussed. Whatever else it contains must be determined by the length and purpose of the article.

II. THE DISCUSSION.

Importance

of the discussion.

The discussion is the main body of the discourse. Without it the introduction and the conclusion are worthless, since the introduction must have something to introduce, and the conclusion something to conclude. The details of the treatment of the discussion are sufficiently considered in the chapters on the Plan and the various Kinds of Composition, and need not be elaborated here.

III. THE CONCLUSION.

Difficulty

of

concluding.

Some writers have as much difficulty in knowing how to stop as they have in knowing how to begin. Their difficulty is largely due to the fact that they follow no plan at all, or one so extensive that it cannot be carried out within reasonable limits. Hence, after reaching a certain point in the discussion, they perceive that they cannot continue the rest of the discourse on the same scale. They therefore have either to condense all that they have written or to bring the discourse to a close without really finishing it. A conclusion that

thus fails to conclude the discourse cannot grow naturally out of the discussion, but must be somewhat abrupt.

length.

The form and the length of the conclusion must be modified by circumstances. It may present an appeal, or a brief summary of arguments, Form and or an application of some part of the discussion. When the plan is carefully considered and due regard is paid to proportion, the conclusion will frequently be a mere expansion of the final topic of the plan.1 The conclusion should not be unduly long, and may sometimes be best omitted altogether. In no case should it recommence after it has naturally come to an end. As between abruptness and tedious repetition we need not hesitate which to choose. If, however, the discussion stops when it is finished, there will be no abruptness.

1 Since both the Introduction and the Conclusion can be fairly judged only when considered in relation to the Discussion, the student must be referred for illustrations to the practice of the best writers.

CHAPTER VI.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION

'Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line."

EMERSON: Experience.

SECTION I.

DESCRIPTION.

A DESCRIPTION is an answer to the question: How does an object or scene appear? More specifically, a description answers questions that con

cern shape, size, position, color.

Definition of description.

Description is of more importance for the use that can be made of it than for its own sake. In a narrative, for example, there is often need of description in order to make vivid the scene in which the action proceeds. So, too, in treatises on geography and history and botany, descriptions are an aid to the clear understanding of the subject.

Value of

description.

Description has its limitations, and it can represent adequately only those objects which contain few details. In the most vivid descriptions it

description.

is surprising how few things are really told. Limitations of A description cannot reproduce a complicated scene, but only suggest something like it.

Seldom can one recognize either a place or a person from a description. Even in the longest description we are obliged to pass over innumerable details, every one of which, if introduced, would slightly modify the whole. But in the attempt to introduce them all, one detail takes attention from another, and adds confusion to the picture. In any description there is, too, the disadvantage of having to reproduce by a succession of words something that must be realized as a whole. There is danger that the reader will forget the beginning of a long description while he is yet becoming acquainted with the end.

Hawthorne realized these limitations and expressed himself freely on the matter in his Note Books:

"Scott evidently used as much freedom with his natural scenery as he did with his historic incidents; and he could have made nothing of either one or the other if he had been more scrupulous in his arrangement and adornment of them. In his description of the Trosachs, he has produced something very beautiful, and as true as possible, though certainly its beauty has a little of the scene-painter's gloss on it. Nature is better, no doubt, but Nature cannot be exactly reproduced on canvas or in print; and the artist's only resource is to substitute something that may stand instead of, and suggest, the truth.”1

"The beauty of English scenery makes me desperate, it is so impossible to describe it, or in any way to record its impressions, and such a pity to leave it undescribed."

2

"I am weary of trying to describe cathedrals. It is utterly useless; there is no possibility of giving the general effect, or any shadow of it, and it is miserable to put down a few items of

1 English Note Books, vol. ii, p. 261, 2 Įbid, vol. ii, p. 93.

tombstones, and a bit of glass from a painted window, as if the gloom and glory of the edifice were thus to be reproduced.”

99 1

"The walk back to the Trosachs showed me Ben Venue and Ben An under new aspects, the bare summit of the latter rising in a perfect pyramid, whereas from other points of view it looks like quite a different mountain. Sometimes a gleam of sunshine came out upon the rugged side of Ben Venue, but his prevailing mood, like that of the rest of the landscape, was stern and gloomy. I wish I could give an idea of the variety of surface upon one of these hillsides, - so bulging out and hollowed in, so bare where the rock breaks through, so shaggy in other places with heath, and then, perhaps, a thick umbrage of birch, oak, and ash ascending from the base high upward. When I think I have described them, I remember quite a different aspect, and find it equally true, and yet lacking something to make it the whole or an adequate truth.” ↑

Since, therefore, we cannot reproduce the whole, we must not attempt the impossible, but must select the most important elements, and so group

particulars.

them that they may suggest the whole. Selection of What those most important elements are we may see by taking a view of an object in its entirety. In looking at a building, a tree, a mountain, we first note the shape, the size, the color. Then by various devices we may bring the form of the object or the scene before the mind of the reader, and, as it were, make him see it through our eyes. We may take objects of familiar shape to explain those not so well known. The outline of a building

may resemble a letter of the alphabet — E, L, T— or

1 English Note Books, vol. ii, p. 8o. 2 Ibid. vol. ii, p. 264.