COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY ENGLISH I 4331957 NO VIMU AMBOLIAD THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. PN4500 PREFACE THIS little treatise is the result of an endeavor to find a fairly rigid, formal method of outlining that could actually be taught. Virtually everything that has been written on outlining refrains from venturing beyond miscellaneous mechanical directions, apparently on the assumption that the fundamental processes involved are of an intuitive nature and cannot be taught. To a mature mind, they are more or less intuitive, and it is desirable that they should be so. But they need not be intuitive; it is possible to create a method that presents definite directions at every stage of the process, a method which is easy to teach and easy to learn and a mastery of which is of great value. The author believes that in this text-book he has explained such a method. It has been used profitably, at all events, by the freshman class in the University of Wisconsin. It is expected that the book will be used in connection with Essays for College Men (Holt), or any other collection of orderly expository writing. It is not expected that it will be used in connection with rambling expository essays or the personal essays " of Lamb and Stevenson. 66 431937 Although the author believes that the training afforded by the preparation of analytical outlines and summaries in accordance with the instruction given in this book has most of the merits of training in argumentation and may very well supplant the latter, and although he believes that it goes far toward teaching students to read intelligently and to remember what they read, he desires to state his opinion that, in the study of such essays as those in this volume and in the many compilations of expository essays, there is always grave danger that formal structure will be greatly overstressed, and that the class-room will become a place for exercise in logic-chopping. It is easily forgotten that the true center in the teaching of expository essays is a realization of the total significance of the thought. This must be carefully distinguished, not only from an image of the framework of the thought, as if literature were a matter of building blocks, but also from a blind memory of phrases, as if literature consisted of a mass of formula. To the latter error, such an essay as Matthew Arnold's Literature and Science" lends itself with particular aptness; of ten students who, after reading it attentively, are certain that they understand it, perhaps not one has obtained so much as a glimpse of the full significance of the ideas. 66 The author is indebted to Dr. Frederick A. |