which, had the author thought proper, might have made a separate sentence.

The following sentences are open to the same sort of exception :

'He (Archbishop Tillotson) was exceedingly beloved both by King William and Queen Mary, who nominated Dr. Tennison, Bishop of Lincoln, to succeed him.'

'After we came to anchor, they put me on shore, where I was welcomed by all my friends, who received me with the greatest kindness.'

'Their march was through an uncultivated country, whose savage inhabitants fared hardly, having no other riches than a breed of lean sheep, whose flesh was rank and unsavoury, by reason of their continual feeding upon sea-fish.'

'He is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner, near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced in literature, to his own house, where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency that he undertook the care and cost of his education.'

This one sentence conducts us through a considerable portion of the life of the poet Prior. We are informed of-1. The loss of his father; 2. His adoption by his uncle; 3. His being sent to Westminster School; 4. His progress in learning; 5. His leaving school; 6. His introduction to the Earl of Dorset;

7. His reading Horace; and 8. His being maintained at the university by the Earl of Dorset.

'To this succeeded that licentiousness which entered with the Restoration, and, from infecting our religion and morals, fell to corrupt our language; which last was not like to be much improved by those who, at that time, made up the Court of King Charles II. either such who had followed him in his banishment, or who had been altogether conversant in the dialect of those fanatic times; or young men who had been educated in the same company; so that the Court, which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was then, and I think hath ever since continued, the worst school in England for that accomplishment; and so will remain till better care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that they may set out into the world with some foundation of literature, in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness.'

It is impossible for anyone to digest so many facts, observations, and reasonings as are here presented to the mind in one sentence.

2. Abstract and concrete ideas should never be forced together in the same grammatical government ;

as:

'On every side, they rose in multitudes, armed with rustic weapons and with irresistible fury.'

But when the writer wishes to put things in a ridiculous light, this is done with great effect; as:—

'He took his hat and leave.' 'He was delivered

from the ditch and all his fears?' 'He is surely much happier in this noble condescension . . . than

if he kept himself aloof from his subjects, continually wrapped up in his own importance and imperial fur, &c.

Parentheses.

In speaking of the general structure of sentences, we had occasion to remark that, as a rule, long parentheses should be avoided. They interfere both with the unity and the beauty of a sentence. They keep the reader too long in suspense about the definite meaning, and break the flow and easy movement of the writing. These objections are felt to be so wellfounded, that a parenthetical style is now out of fashion, though occasionally affected by some of our most eminent living authors. The following extracts will serve to illustrate the disagreeable effect of parentheses:

'It was an ancient tradition, that when the capital 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.'

'When this Parliament sat down (for it deserves our particular observation that both Houses were full of zeal for the present Government, and of resentment against the late usurpations), there was but one party in Parliament, and no other party could raise its head. in the nation.'

'Though Fame, who is always the herald of the great, has seldom deigned to transmit the exploits of the lower ranks to posterity (for it is commonly the fate of those whom fortune has placed in the vale of

P

obscurity to have their noble acts buried in oblivion), yet, in their verses, the minstrels have preserved many instances of domestic woe and felicity.'

Such forms as, 'If I may be allowed the word,' 'If I may hazard the remark,' · If I may so express myself,' &c., are open to the same objection as longer parentheses; and even shorter insertions, such as, 'in some sense,' as it were,' so to speak,' &c., should be introduced very sparingly.

6

The following sentence from Fielding's 'Essay on Nothing' is exceptionable in this particular :

'The most astounding instance of respect, so frequently paid to Nothing, is when it is paid (if I may so express myself) to something less than Nothing; when the person who receives it is not only void of the qualities for which he is respected, but is in reality notoriously guilty of vices directly opposite to the virtues whose applause he receives. This, indeed, is the highest degree of Nothing, or (if I may be allowed the word) the Nothingest of all Nothings.'

3. When a sentence arrives at its natural close, nothing more should be added. We frequently find, when we come to what seems the proper conclusion of a sentence, that some extraneous remark, not quite to the purpose, or not in keeping with the main thought, is appended. Such an addition directly

tends to spoil the effect, by interfering with the compactness and unity of the sentence. For example, Sir William Temple, speaking of Burnet and Fontenelle, says:

'The first could not end his learned treatise without a panegyric of modern learning and knowledge in

comparison of the ancients; 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.'

The proper close of this sentence is at the word 'indignation.' What is added is foreign to the purpose, and should be retrenched.

STRENGTH IN SENTENCES.

A sentence is said to possess strength when its words and clauses are so arranged as to convey the author's meaning most impressively. To effect this, 1, it should be cleared of all superfluous words. On this subject we have already made some observations under the head of Tautology,' and therefore one or two more examples of redundancy will be here sufficient :

'This is so clear a proposition, that I rest the whole argument entirely upon it.' (Either whole' or entirely' should be expunged.)

Saul and his companions journeying along their way to Damascus.'

cessary.)

(The words in italics are unne

Adjectives.

2. One cause of this form of diffusiveness is the immoderate use of adjectives. When judiciously applied, adjectives have a powerful influence in heightening