gift which is notoriously without necessary connection with wisdom or any other mental power; in its crude form it is often found in the rant of revivalists and demagogues; in its highest form it fills with the breath of life prose as severely simple and restrained as Cardinal Newman's dedication of his "Apologia." At all times it is a gift to be kept in hand rather than let loose; for the mere exercise of it is exciting and may turn a serious discourse into rhodomontade.

As has been stated, it is almost impossible to give practical help towards acquiring this gift of an expressive style: the ear for the rhythm and assonance of style is like the ear for music, though more common, perhaps. It is good practice to read aloud the writing of men who are famous for the quality, and when you read to yourself always to have in your mind the sound of what you read. The more you can give yourself of this exercise, the more when you write yourself will you hear the way your own style sounds. Until you thus hear your style yourself it will be mere chance whether you make it agreeable to the senses of your hearers or readers.

Then, in the second place, get yourself into the habit of being full of the seriousness or delightfulness of what you have to say. In Cardinal Newman's dedication of the " Apologia" the intensity of his feelings made words which in themselves are commonplace enough vibrate and glow with emotion. Mr. Collins' defence of Dean Swift is so warm and personal that his words almost call for an excited and

heightened delivery in the reading. And Mr. Choate's argument, which from all the necessities and proprieties of the case had to be restrained in manner, nevertheless shows that he took more than an advocate's interest in his cause: it is dignified, but it is moving and impressive in the fulness of its periods; it could never be mistaken for the academic discussion of a purely impersonal question.

When I come to a closer examination of the mechanics of the moving power of style, I can only make a few observations, without attempting to explain them. If you look at a few pages of Mr. Choate's argument, you will notice that questions are commoner than in ordinary writing; and that such appositions as the following are piled up: "If there is one factitious argument, one pretence of a reason, one attempt to make a distinction without a difference that this Court has uniformly stamped on with all its might, it is just that." Besides the questions and the insistent apposition, you cannot help noticing too the use of balance, as in the use of the parallel construction in such a passage as that on page 330 where six sentences, with only one break, begin with the words "It will leave." This same use of the parallel construction appears also constantly in Mr. Collins' argument about the marriage of Swift; as for example in the sentence on page 279. But it is unnecessary to cite further instances; these turns of style are everywhere recognized as the earmarks of an argumentative style. When you begin to look for the quality that they have in common, to

find why they are effective in argument, you notice that they all contribute to emphasis. The frequent interpolation of questions into the discourse at once. quickens the attention; for you are so in the habit of coming to attention when you are asked a question that even when the question is purely rhetorical as here, you instinctively start to the same attitude of mind. The use of the question is, then, a kind of trick on you to make you take the idea with your mind particularly alert. So with the piling up of appositions; it is merely an insistence on some idea by turning it first one side forward and then the other, and by showing all its bearings on the question in hand. Moreover the balance and the parallel construction accentuate the manner in which the various facts and ideas which are so presented reinforce each other to establish the view which they set forth. Emphasis, then, is a large part of the object and achievement of a moving rhythm in argumentative writing, as in other modes. It is Professor Wendell's Principle of Mass transferred to the ear; bring the stress of the sentence on the words that deserve distinction. All the rhetorical devices which can be invented can do no more than this to stimulate the attention of your reader or hearer.

For the other sensuous qualities of pure style, sonorousness, richness of color, expressive cadences, delectable assonance, so far as they contribute more than this increase of emphasis, they may be more conveniently discussed when we come to the subject of descriptive writing; for there we shall

come more closely to the borders of æsthetics, into which the consideration of them merges. For the present it is enough to point out that a writer who puts his views forward in a style that is pleasant in itself will find more readers, and more who will read through what he has to say, than if he puts the best possible explanation forward in a discourse whose only charm is its truth. And more than this, the gift of a dignified and resonant style, as in Mr. Choate's argument, goes far to convince you of the unaffected zeal on the part of the writer for his cause. If, on the other hand, the style is too sonorous or too excited for the subject, as perhaps some people may feel in the case of Mr. Collins' argument, it will have the reverse effect of making you suspect that the writer has not that weight of judgment which comes from quiet and deliberate thought. So with a style where the attempt at this moving power of rhythm is obvious to the reader: any such extrinsic decoration will make your reader suspicious that you are playing on his feelings. In writing, as I have already said, ornament should follow and accentuate the thought, as in architecture it should emphasize the lines of structure. The trace of self-consciousness that hangs on Stevenson's style at the best is a defect—the only blemish it had at its very best; for it drags him in when your attention should be given wholly to what he writes. A conscious effort, then, to make style rhythmical is the most dangerous thing you can play with; you can study the rhythm in the works of the great

writers until your ear rings, as it were, with the tunes to which they wrote, and if you like you may practise these tunes by yourself. But when you come to the writing of something which you wish to influence the opinion or the action of other people, forget all this and give yourself up wholly to your subject and to the view of it which you uphold. Then the more fully you believe that it is the truth, the more important you feel it to be that this truth shall prevail, and the more you can stir up your feelings on the subject without losing perfect control of them, the more likely will you be to be persuasive. If you are by nature of dry and sober feelings, not given to deranging your intellectual habits by enthusiasm, beware of aping the manner of more mercurial and passionate people; if you have not the capacity inborn in you of being persuasive, be content with aiming at the other virtue of an argument, lucidity.

24. Criticism.- Criticism, as I said, I shall confine to that kind of writing which utters your impressions and judgments of works of art taking the term art in a pretty broad sense. For our purposes the criticism which scrutinizes and restores texts belongs under Explanation. Criticism is a kind. of writing, therefore, into which both thought and feeling enter; for it is an attempt to explain to some one else the nature and the basis of your feelings. And by the relative preponderance of the. thought or the feeling criticisms may be roughly classified. On the one hand there are the criticisms