'And thereby hangs a tale.' The best conceivable arrangement. The subject 'tale' has full emphasis, and is, moreover, brought into proximity with what naturally follows the particulars of the tale.

'In the background rose the mist, like incense.' Inversion is here turned to account in a descriptive sentence. The order conforms to one of the laws of description, namely, to give the scene or situation, previous to stating the action that is to take place in it. The simile, 'like incense,' follows the subject compared. There is an obvious inferiority in the form-'The mist, like incense, rose in the background'.

'There was a sound of revelry by night.' Not the best possible disposition of the adverbs. By night was heard a sound of revelry,' dispenses with There,' and gives to the subject the place of emphasis at the end.

6

Duncan comes here to-night': otherwise, 'To-night comes Duncan here'. Both time and place are emphatic under the circumstances: the greater emphasis may be supposed to attach to 'here'.

Not wholly sank he. O'er that mist of spray
Glittered his sword. There fell a silence strange:
Slowly that mist dispersed; and on the sands
That false Enchanter lay, with all his sons,
Black, bleeding bulks of death.

In the foregoing lines, there are five sentences of the character we are now discussing. Three have the full inversion; the fourth might equally well be inverted, without disturbing the metre-Slowly dispersed that mist'. The fifth would want a little adjustment for the sake of metre—'Lay that false enchanter'; and the inversion would be an improvement, if only to bring the subject 'enchanter' closer to its adjuncts.

When the verb is made up with auxiliaries, or with 'can,' 'must,' &c., the inversion often goes no farther than placing the subject after the auxiliary and before the verb.

To this extremity were we driven.'

Let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come,' might be 'must she come'; but not 'must come she,' or come must she'. A greater mistake was never made.' By inversion-'Never was a greater mistake made': or, 'Never was made a greater mistake,'-admissible but somewhat forced.

INVERSION SHOULD BE THOROUGH.

13

'On Monday will be shown the entire collection.' Here the inversion is to the best effect.

For 'I have often observed,' where the adverb is placed between the auxiliary and the adverb, we may have the inverted form-'Often have I observed'; whereby an increased emphasis is given to the often'.

In the following passage from Pope, the inversion in this class of cases is carried yet farther, the auxiliary being placed after the principal verb:

'Go see Sir Robert

'See Sir Robert-hum

And never laugh- for all my life to come?
Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
Seen him, uncumber'd with the venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.'

The intention, of course, is to reiterate with emphasis the word see, and this justifies the form, which might be felt harsh if standing alone. It is this emphatic repetition of the verb, already expressed or implied, that is the usual object in cases of this sort, sometimes also with added force on the auxiliary. 'Go he must,' refers to a preceding statement or thought that he will refuse to go, and also puts stress on the compulsion expressed in the 'must'. So here: He might, perhaps, be taugh to do it better; but let it alone he cannot'.

There is little or nothing gained, except through the accident of metre or sound, in partially inverting sentences of the class we are now considering :

In being's flood, in action's storm

(We walk =) walk we and work.

'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,' could not be thoroughly inverted without destroying the exquisite metre and melody. We might go a certain length without loss:- How sweet upon this bank the moonlight sleeps'. In prose we could be thorough-'How sweet upon this bank sleeps the moonlight'.

O'er all the dreary coasts,

So stretched out, huge in length, the archfiend lay.

To invert and say, 'Lay the archfiend,' would impair the metre. But the adjective phrase, ‘huge in length,' might

go after the subject:

So stretched out, lay the archfiend, huge in length.

So glozed the tempter.

So work the honey bees.

Wordsworth calls Grasmere

The loveliest spot that man hath ever found.

The emphasis of order would assist the superlative meaning: Never hath man found a lovelier spot'.

The foot of Adam Smith was on the steps of power': 'On the steps of power was

Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell.' (Burke.) Here the inversion is not only a clear gain in impressiveness, but enables the subject to be brought into immediate connection with the qualifying clauses. Moreover, these clauses also receive a emphatic position than they would have, if following the subject in the body of the sentence.

more

The complement of an incomplete verb may be placed first, in the same way as the adverb:-'Soft blew the wind'. This is the generalised case of the first series of examples of inversion, those with an adjective predicate.

Pity, kind gentlefolks, friends of humanity,

Keen blows the wind, and the night's coming on.

13. III.-Inversion of Active Verb and Object. In a sentence having an Active Verb, together with Subject and Object, emphasis is often sought by inverting the grammatical order. The most complete inversion is to begin with the object and end with the subject: 'Another parable spake he unto them'; 'Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks'.

Not unfrequently the verb is last:-Thee, the voice, the dance obey'. The thorough inversion, in such cases, is often an improvement: Thee obey the voice, the dance'.

The presence of one or more adverbial adjuncts gives scope for still greater variations of order. The adverb may precede, as in the foregoing class of inversions: or it may remain in its more regular grammatical position, while the object is placed first.

'In this fool's paradise, he drank delight.' Here the adverb emphatically precedes, while the rest of the sentence is regular. The inversion could be carried farther, and in several ways. The most easy and natural way is to bring the verb close to the adverb, as if it were a neuter verb: 'In this fool's paradise, drank he delight'. Otherwise, 'delight he drank,' not so good. The complete inversion, 'delight drank he,' is unsuitable. The word 'delight

:

INVERSION OF ACTIVE VERB AND OBJECT.

15

is more emphatic than either drank' or 'he,' and is properly placed at the end.

The present inversion is in practice restricted, from fear of ambiguity. The joy of youth and health her eyes display'd,' is not more than clear as it stands; by making it 'display'd her eyes,' we should raise a doubt as to whether there was an inversion or not.

'How solemn the thoughts that the future explore,' is saved from ambiguity by the plural verb.

The inversion we are now dealing with, like those preceding, may be illustrated from the usage of the English Bible. Take the following

instances:

'Mine head with oil thou didst not anoint.'

"This Jesus hath God raised up.'

'Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.'

'Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers.'
'My mercy will I keep for him for evermore;

his seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.' Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plum

met.'

My glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.

The above specimens have something of the poetic colouring, so that the inversion adds to their effect. There are also cases of the usage in pure prose, such as these: 'All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables'.

The emphasis of the following inversion has always been felt-Silver and gold have I none'. The emphatic circumstances are in their best places. The 'silver and gold' is the important idea of the sentence; but the highest stress is reserved for the negative 'none'. Any one can see how much less energetic would be the direct order—‘I have no silver or gold'. In pronunciation, the feebleness of the order might be remedied by putting special emphasis on 'no'. With the inverted arrangement, the emphasis comes as a matter of course.

We might arrange the above so as to put the negative first, and the 'silver and gold' last; yet the effect would not be the same :-'Not mine is either silver or gold'.

Farther examples of the same form :

Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on thee.

In the following from Pope, we have a pronominal object thrown into great and significant prominence by inversion:—

Me let the tender office long engage

To rock the cradle of reposing age.

'The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny.' (Pitt.) Here not only does the object gain in emphasis, but we have the farther advantage that the atrocious crime' is fully described before we are told how it is to be dealt with-neither palliated nor denied. The mock seriousness of the statement would be much lessened, if the direct order were taken: we should miss the humour of the declaration, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny,' if we did not already know what is the crime he thus solemnly pleads guilty of having committed.

'Dissolvents of the old European systems of dominant ideas and facts we must all be, all of us that have any power of working: what we have to study is that we may not be acrid dissolvents of it.' (M. Arnold.)

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal-every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open-this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.' (Washington Irving.)

14. IV. Relative Emphasis of beginning and end. We have already given general reasons for the superior emphasis of the close of the sentence. These reasons will now be supported by examples.

If we compare the expressions, 'liberal conservative' and conservative liberal,' we find the interpretation to be, that the first is a conservative with liberal leanings, but more conservative than liberal; while the second is more liberal than conservative. The inference is, that the last word, from its position, acquires superior impressiveness.

It is stated in the Companion to the Higher Grammar (p. 305) that the phrases 'first three,' three first' are, grammatically, contractions for first, second, and third'. When the question arises which of the forms is the more proper, the answer depends upon where the emphasis is supposed to lie. The first three' would put stress on the 'three,' as if we were dealing with groups of three. The 'three first' would indicate that we wanted three in all, but that the three must be specially taken from the commencement of the row.

The postal letters E.C., W.C., mean that a certain district is laid out, called the Central District. This is subdivided into two portions, East and West, and the letter prefixed to the C. shows which is intended. The combinations C.E. and C.W. would have a different rendering.

In the points of the compass intermediate between N., S., E., W., there is always one order of the letters, N.E., S.E., S.W., N.W. There is here a peculiar hypothesis as to the winds, namely, that the primary currents are East