Number of Sentences 23 ples my parents instilled into my unwary understanding, or by a general consent proceed 15 in the religion of my country: but having in my riper years and confirmed judgment seen and examined all, I find myself obliged, by the principles of grace, and the law of mine own reason, to embrace no other name but this. 20 Neither doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I owe unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks, infidels, and (what is worse) Jews; rather contenting myself to enjoy that happy style, than 25 maligning those who refuse so glorious a title. Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici. What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant 5 who said, No man can see God face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long time avails him nothing. 10 Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say, I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but 15 cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed attitude of the library to seize the thought. But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. 20 A certain wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature 25 by which we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood,-the law of undulation. So you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity and see 30 what the great Soul showeth. Emerson: In tellect.1 20. Apparently the question is "Long sentences or short?" And the answer is twofold. First, as a matter of logic, a given statement is left as an independent sentence or is combined in the same sentence with other statements according as it is coördinate or 'Quoted in Carpenter's Exercises in Rhetoric and English Composition in this connection. Number of Sentences 25 subordinate. Logically, then, the question becomes: "Should this statement receive the prominence of a separate sentence, or should it be reduced to a clause or a phrase?"1 Here also is involved the principle of emphasis. 21. In the second place, as a matter of rhetoric, the succession of sentences in the first paragraph is smooth, in the second paragraph abrupt. And the difference, though it lies partly in explicit reference, lies mainly in the predominance of long or of short sentences. A paragraph of long sentences, then, has the advantage over a paragraph of short sentences in a nicer subordination and an easier flow. But it will not do to think of a paragraph as limited to one or the other. Each has its purpose, and both are necessary to variety. Moreover, since monotony of style means monotony in sentence-forms, variety in length is an end in itself. ་ 22. Again, it is evident from §§ 12-15 that a paragraph is a group of sentences 1 1 Practice in reduction of this kind is a direct means of overcoming a habit of redundancies. But para when we consider its coherence. graph coherence affects even the form of the sentences, by what has been called "inversion for adjustment." A striking example of this is the following oratorical paragraph : But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, œconomists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.—Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. It should be added, first, that such inversions, besides contributing to paragraph coherence, contribute also, like the exclamatory Form of Sentences 27 and interrogative forms, to emphasis and variety; secondly, that inversion, exclamation, interrogation, all three must be regarded as exceptional. The frequent use of these devices makes style laboured and pompous. The length of a sentence, then, and its form are to be decided, not absolutely for the sentence itself, but relatively to the paragraph. |