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6. Raised to greatness without merit, he employed his power for the gratification solely of his passions.

7. I was engaged formerly in that business, but I never shall be again concerned in it.

8. By greatness, I do not only mean the bulk of any single object, but the largeness of a whole view.

9. If Louis XIV. was not the greatest king, he was the best actor of majesty, at least, that ever filled a throne.

II. Correct the errors in the position of clauses and circumstances, in the following sentences ·

·

1. I have settled the meaning of those pleasures of the imagination, which are the subject of my present undertaking, by way of introduction, in this paper; and endeavoured to recommend the pursuit of those pleasures to my readers, by several considerations: I shall examine the several sources whence these pleasures are derived, in the next paper.

2. Fields of corn form a pleasant prospect; and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, they would dislay neatness, regularity, and elegance.

3. I have confined myself to those methods for the advancement of piety, which are in the power of a prince, limited like ours, by a strict execution of the laws.

4. This morning, when one of the gay females was looking over some hoods and ribands, brought by her tirewoman, with great care and diligence, I employed no less in examining the box which contained them.

5. Since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted or connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is often undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

6. As the guilt of an officer will be greater than that of a common servant, if he prove negligent, so the reward of his fidelity will be proportionably greater.

7. Let the virtue of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered as the result.

8. The knight, seeing his habitation reduced to so small a compass, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his mother, ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by the chaplain.

9. This work, in its full extent, being now afflicted with an

asthma, and finding the power of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage to undertake.

10. The witness had been ordered to withdraw from the bar, in consequence of being intoxicated, by the motion of an honourable member.

III. Correct the errors in the position or the too frequent repetition of pronouns, in the following sen

tences:

1. These are the master's rules, who must be obeyed.

2. They attacked the Duke of Northumberland's house, whom they put to death.

3. It is true what he says, but it is not applicable to the point. 4. He was taking a view, from a window, of the cathedral of Litchfield, in which a party of the royalists had fortified themselves.

5. It is folly to pretend to arm ourselves against the accidents of life, by heaping up treasures, which nothing can protect us against, but the good providence of our Heavenly Father.

6. Thus I have fairly given you my opinion, as well as that of a great inajority of both houses here, relating to this weighty affair, upon which I am confident you may securely reckon.

7. We nowhere meet with a more splendid or pleasing show in nature, than what appears in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light, that show themselves in clouds of a different situation.

8. From a habit of saving time and paper, which they acquired at the university, many write in so diminutive a manner, with such frequent blots and interlineations, that they are hardly able to go on without perpetual hesitation or extemporary expletives.

9. Lysias promised to his father never to abandon his friends. 10. They were summoned occasionally by their kings, when compelled by their wants and by their fears to have recourse to their aid.

11. Men look with an evil eye upon the good that is in others, and think that their reputation obscures them, and that their commendable qualities do stand in their light; and therefore they do what they can to cast a cloud over them, that the bright shining of their virtues may not obscure them.

SECTION VI.

UNITY IN THE STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES.

Unity in the structure of a sentence consists in making one leading thought connect its different parts. To attain unity in the structure of sentences, avoidI. Changing the scene or actor during the course of a sentence;-II. Crowding into one sentence things which have so little connexion, that they may be divided into two or more sentences;-III. All unnecessary parentheses;-IV. Extending a sentence beyond what seems its natural close.

EXERCISES.

I. Correct the errors arising from the change of the scene or actor, in the following sentences:

1. A short time after this injury, he came to himself; and the next day they put him on board a ship, which conveyed him first to Corinth, and thence to the Island of Egina.

2. The Britons, daily harassed by cruel inroads from the Picts, were forced to call in the Saxons for their defence; who consequently reduced the greater part of the island to their own power, drove the Britons into the most remote and mountainous parts; and the rest of the country, in customs, religion, and languages, became wholly Saxon.

3. By eagerness of temper, and precipitancy of indulgence, men forfeit all the advantages which patience would have procured; and, by these means, the opposite evils are incurred to their full

extent.

4. All the precautions of prudence, moderation, and condescension, which Eumenes employed, were incapable of mollifying the hearts of these barbarians, and of extinguishing their jealousy; and he must have renounced the virtue and merit which occasioned it, to have been capable of appeasing them.

5. He who performs every employment in its due place and season, suffers no part of time to escape without profit; and thus his days become multiplied, and much of life is enjoyed in little

space.

6. Desire of pleasure ushers in temptation, and the growth of disorderly passions is forwarded.

II. Correct such errors, in the following passages, as arise from crowding into one sentence things which have no intimate connexion:

1. The notions of Lord Sunderland were always good; but he was a man of great expense.

2. Cato died in the full vigour of life, under fifty; he was naturally warm and affectionate in his temper; comprehensive, impartial, and strongly possessed with the love of mankind.

3. In this uneasy state, both of his public and private life, Cicero was oppressed by a new and deep affliction, the death of his beloved daughter Tullia; which happened soon after her divorce from Dolabella, whose manners and humours were entirely disagreeable to her.

4. The sun approaching melts the snow, and breaks the icy fetters of the main, when vast sea-monsters pierce through floating islands, with arms that can withstand the crystal rock; whilst others, that of themselves seem great as islands, are by their bulk alone armed against all but man, whose superiority over creatures of such size and force, should make him mindful of his privilege of reason, and force him humbly to adore the great composer of these wondrous frames, and the author of his own superior wisdom.

5. I single him out among the moderns, because he had the foolish presumption to censure Tacitus, and to write history himself; and your lordship will forgive this short excursion in honour of a favourite author.

6. Boast not thyself of to-morrow; thou knowest not what a day may bring forth: and, for the same reason, despair not of tomorrow; for it may bring forth good as well as evil; which is a ground for not vexing thyself with imaginary fears; for the impending black cloud, which is regarded with so much dread, may pass by harmless: or though it should discharge the storm, yet before it breaks, thou mayest be lodged in that lowly mansion which no storms ever touch.

III. Correct the errors in the use of parentheses, in the following sentences:—

1. Disappointments will often happen to the best and wisest men (not through any imprudence of theirs, nor even through the malice or ill design of others; but merely in consequence of some of those cross incidents of life which could not be foreseen,) and sometimes to the wisest and best concerted plans.

2. Without some degree of patience exercised under injuries, (as offences and retaliations would succeed to one another in endless train,) human life would be rendered a state of perpetual hostility.

3. Never delay till to-morrow, (for to-morrow is not yours; and though you should live to enjoy it, you must not overload it with a burden not its own,) what reason and conscience tell you ought to be performed to-day.

4. We must not imagine that there is in true religion any thing which overcasts the mind with sullen gloom and melancholy austerity, (for false ideas may be entertained of religion, as false and imperfect conceptions of virtue have often prevailed in the world,) or which derogates from that esteem which men are generally disposed to yield to exemplary virtues.

5. It was an ancient tradition, that when the capitol was founded by one of the Roman kings, the god Terminus (who presided over boundaries, and was represented according to the fashion of that age by a large stone) alone, among all the inferior deities, refused to yield his place to Jupiter himself.

IV. Correct such errors, in the following passages, as arise from extending the sentences beyond what seems their natural close :

1. Religious instruction could never be appointed to give such empty, insignificant delight as this: nor doth it in the least attain its proper end, unless it influences men to forget the preacher, and think of themselves; unless it raises in them, not a superficial complacency, or an idle admiration, but an awful solicitude about their eternal welfare, and that a durable one.

2. The first could not end his learned treatise without a panegyric on modern learning and knowledge in comparison of the ancient ; and the other falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry, and preference of the new, that I could not read either of these strains without indignation, which no quality among men is so apt to raise in me as sufficiency, the worst composition out of the pride and ignorance of mankind.

3. All the world acknowledges the Æneid to be most perfect in its kind; and, considering the disadvantage of the language, and the severity of the Roman Muse, the poem is still more wonderful; since, without the liberty of the Grecian poets, the diction is so great and noble, so clear, so forcible, and expressive, so chaste and

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