(5.) The Participial phrase for a clause. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion': a condensed expression for 'he was enraged and mortified, and, therefore, soon returned to his mansion'. Mingled with them were to be found naval commanders of a very different description' in full form, naval commanders of a very different description were to be found, and they were mingled with these'. 'The Romans, having now set foot in Sicily, determined to declare war against Carthage,' is equivalent to, The Romans had now set foot in Sicily, and so determined,' &c. In all such cases, we have the advantage that is gained by throwing two separate propositions into one energetic declaration.

The following example shows the capacities of condensation possessed by this form:

Vanished every fear, and every power

Roused into life and action, light in air

The acquitted parents see their soaring race,
And once rejoicing never know them more.

(6.) By Prefixes and Suffixes, and, in general, by the process of compounding words.

It is the chief function of the composition of words by short particles, to give a grand extension of meanings at a very small cost. Take as one example the prefix 're' applied to verbs :-return, replace, reunite, recapture, restore, refund. In each case a much longer expression would be needed to give the sense otherwise.

So with suffixes. There is an immense compression of meaning in such compounds as absenteeism, admissibility, infinitesimal.

'Forcible-feeble' is used to describe such writers as fail in their efforts to be forcible.

The union of highly composite words with verbal abstracts is often terse to a degree. As, for example :—a foregone conclusion, unaccountable presumption, pre-indesignate propositions, 'unreadable semi-popish jargon' (Carlyle).

Burke says of Hyder Ali :-'He decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals, a memorable example to mankind'.

The idea of God has been degraded by childish and little-minded teaching.' (Seeley.)

15. III. Rhetorical devices, strictly so called.
Among devices coming under the head of Rhetoric, are

RHETORICAL DEVICES FOR BREVITY.

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the Condensed Sentence, and the use of Figures of Speech, many of which lend themselves to brevity. To enter into a full statement of such effects would be to anticipate, at a disadvantage, the handling of these subjects. A few examples will suffice.

Condensed Sentence :

He lives to build, not boast, a generous race.

Contrasting the supposed primitive state of nature' with man's present condition, Pope says :

Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to nature, hears the general groan,
Murders their species and betrays his own.

Condensing Figures :

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,
Feels at cach thread, and lives along the line.

And read their history in a nation's eyes.

The winding sheet of Edward's race.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.

Wordsworth thus addresses the lark in the sky;

Leave to the nightingale her woods ;
A privacy of glorious light is thine.

Johnson has the following:

The unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain.

Leslie Stephen says of Pope that he was always 'a

hand-to-mouth liar'.

There was no telling what might turn up in the slowly churning chances of his mind.' (George Eliot.)

Paradoxes are the burrs of literature-they stick to the

mind.'

Institutions are not mere machines, they are also organisms; they have a certain power of gradual modification analogous to growth.'

Among the Figurative arts we are to include the omission of all those parts of a phrase that the mind readily supplies. This is the principle of the putting of the Noun in the place of the Adjective. There are many other forms of the same device. We say- Murder will out,' the needful verb being easily supplied. After coining the combination, Johnsoniana,' &c., for the collection of sayings attributed to Johnson, and so for others, we cut off the

termination, and make a word 'ana anecdotes.

for any collection of

In Expository style, condensation is gained by means of general notions, whose very nature it is to compress a host of particulars into a single statement. The use of a general term transfers at once all its meanings to a new When we have generalised the idea of Municipality, the employment of the word brings up all its meaning at a stroke: The Roman system broke down, as being a municipal system, and unfit for Empire'.

case.

The following sentence, by means of a comprehensive generalisation, puts before us the prevailing tenor of Asiatic history. The birth of Timur, or Tamerlane, was cast at one of those recurring periods, in the history of Asiatic sovereignties, when the enjoyment of power for several generations, having extinguished all manly virtues in the degenerate descendants of some active usurper, prepares the governors of the provinces for revolt, dissolves the power of the state, and opens the way for the elevation of some new and daring adventurer.'

16. According as a thing is well known, the reference to it may be brief.

This has been already involved in the previous illustration. Nevertheless, it deserves specific mention. It is a form of the self-evident principle, that the style should be accommodated to the hearers-diffuse on points where they are little informed, short and allusive in the contrary case.

It has been objected to the style of Browning, that allusions to all sorts of little known subjects are constantly occurring, allusions that must be quite unintelligible to many readers, and intelligible to others only after mature reflection or research. Such a style is possibly a reaction from the opposite extreme of explaining everything, and so leaving nothing to the reader's intelligence-a characteristic to be observed in much of our earlier literature.

Speaking more generally, condensation may be gained by allusions instead of expanded statements; if inappropriately chosen, they may bring up to the reader's mind but a portion of what is before the writer; if happily selected, they will point to something that implies the whole. This is the secret of what is called a suggestive style. Take for example Wordsworth's lines:

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

Here very little is actually expressed; but a great deal is suggested. So in In Memoriam':

SUBORDINATION MARKED BY BREVITY.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust ;
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die,

And thou hast made him: thou art just.

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A brief but suggestive presentation of the well-known argument for immortality based on man's natural expectation of it: and the unexpressed conclusion is clenched by the mere statement of God's justice. Or take the following, in reference to the vanity of man's life apart from such a hope :

O life as futile, then, as frail !

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

17. The distinction between principal and subordinate in a sentence, paragraph, &c., is marked by comparative length in the statement.

As in a state procession, the greatest space is accorded to the highest dignitaries, so the principal matter of a sentence is distinguished by the length of the expression. Hence the necessity of the condensing arts in the wording of subordinate clauses.

'Even the Atlantean shoulders of Jonson (fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies) have been hardly tasked to support and transmit (to our own day) the fame of his great genius, overburdened (as it was) with the (twofold) load of his theories (on art) and his pedantries (of practice).' Here the leading assertion is weighed down with needless additions subordinate to it: the omission of all that we have enclosed in brackets would leave the sense intact, while lightening the main proposition. So again :

'Their savourless interludes of false and forced humour may indeed be matched even in the greatest of Jonson's works; there is here hardly anything heavier than the voluminous foolery of Scoto of Mantua and the dolorous long-winded doggerel drivelled forth by that dreary trinity of dwarf, eunuch, and hermaphrodite, whom any patron of less patience than Volpone, with a tithe of his wit and genius, would surely have scourged out of doors long before they were turned forth to play by Mosca'. Here the leading point set forth in the first part of the sentence is altogether obscured by the disproportional and involved expansion given to a mere subordinate illustration in the second half.

Contrast these examples with this sentence of Gibbon : This profanation was received with a very faint murmur by the easy nature of polytheism'.

EXEMPLARY PASSAGES.

For remarkable strokes of Brevity, we may dwell at any length upon passages in Shakespeare. It is evidently one of his aims to produce strength by extreme condensation, as well as by energy in the words employed. His methods are easily assigned, as may be seen by a few examples.

If the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all, here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come.

Here we remark, first, the plentiful employment of the abstract noun-assassination, consequence, surcease, success. Next we have a bold metaphor, jump,' applied to futurity. Thirdly, we have expressive innovations in phraseology, contrived for shortnesstrammel up,'' be-all and end-all'. The verb 'trammel-up' is an invention, as far as regards this peculiar meaning. In 'bank and shoal of time,' we have a tautology, justified by the strength of the feeling, and also by what often redeems tautology in our great writers originality in the coupling.

Again :

My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise.

There is here a series of daring misapplications of terms; but in
correcting them, we should destroy the condensed energy of the
passage. For whose murther,' we should have to say, 'in which the
idea of murther'. The word 'fantastical' stands for ‘in imagina-
tion'. The adjective ‘single,' in ‘single state of man,' cannot be con-
strued into meaning, without a roundabout paraphrase. The con-
cluding phrase-function is smothered in surmise'-is another case
of abstract nouns coupled by a strong metaphor. In a prose ren-
dering, none of the three words would be strictly apposite.
Another instance :--

I do here perceive a divided duty.

The word 'divided' saves a much longer statement; but it is suggestive rather than appropriate. We can readily understand what it means; but the adjective cannot be interpreted as qualifying the word 'duty'. Duty does not admit of being divided; though it may carry us in opposite directions at the same time. A word more apposite would be 'conflicting'; it is common to speak of 'conflicting obligations'.

Pope furnishes abundant examples of energetic Brevity, depending on all the various devices of style suited to this purpose. Of the following four lines on the origin of Society, Mark Pattison observes that they are expressed with a condensed energy which it would be difficult to improve upon ' :

Here very

Heaven forming each on other to depend,

A master, or a servant, or a friend,

Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.

So in In Menre appropriate, and none are superfluous.

The second