Outlines of Rhetoric: Embodied in Rules, Illustrative Examples, and Progressive Course of Prose Composition (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Outlines of Rhetoric: Embodied in Rules, Illustrative Examples, and Progressive Course of Prose CompositionTo amend incorrect sentences, while of course necessary, is after all a negative thing, and the mental attitude it requires is the critical. Composition is positive, requiring the construc tive attitude on the part of the writer. It seems a pity to keep the student working exclusively at crooked English, without doing something even from the outset to foster that desire to contrive, to build, to bring to pass, which is so necessary to any fruitful literary work. For this reason, there are introduced from the beginning of the book certain problems to solve, the object being to give the student all along something creative to do. As the book progresses, the relative proportion of this con structive work is increased, while the merely critical, which was so predominating at first, becomes more and more subordinate. It is not in theology alone that the law of Thou shalt not should be swallowed up in the gospel of Thou shalt; in composition, too, as in many other things, the ideal must be borne constantly in mind, to be effected as rapidly as the man can be trusted in obeying the gospel not to discard the law.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.