RHETORICAL DEVICES FOR BREVITY. 47 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; Condensing Figures : The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine, Placed on this isthmus of a middle state. Wordsworth thus addresses the lark in the sky; Leave to the nightingale her woods; 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 for any collection of anecdotes. 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; And thou hast made him: thou art just. 49 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! 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 murinur 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, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 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 shortness— trammel 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, 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 imagination'. The adjective 'single,' in 'single state of man,' cannot be construed into meaning, without a roundabout paraphrase. The concluding phrase-function is smothered in surmise'is another case of abstract nouns coupled by a strong metaphor. In a prose rendering, 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 ' : 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. The words are appropriate, and none are superfluous. The second ILLUSTRATIONS FROM POPE AND SHELLEY. 51 line is the only part that could possibly be omitted; and the omission would produce obscurity. The three examples make plain the nature of the dependence; 'master and servant' exemplify compulsory relationships, while 'friend' comprehends various forms of voluntary dependence. The participial form is turned to good account in the first line. The figure of epigram is happily used in the last line, both brevity and force being gained by it. Take another instance, where the theme is the beneficial operation of self-love. How shall he keep what, sleeping or awake, A weaker may surprise, a stronger take? All join to guard what each desires to gain. There is nothing very notable in the first two lines. The clause sleeping or awake' expresses the thought intended with brevity; but, as is not unusual in Pope's condensed forms, it is ungrammatical, since it really applies to 'he,' not to a weaker,' as the construction would suggest. There was not much need for the double expression of the idea in the second line: one word would have sufficiently brought out the meaning of both 'surprising' and 'taking'. On the other hand, the last two lines are compact and forcible. There are no unnecessary words, and those employed are well chosen; the abstract nouns, 'safety' and 'liberty,' are used to condense what would have otherwise taken distinct clauses to express; and in both lines there is an epigrammatic point in their form, which also becomes a means of brevity. As an illustrative contrast, we can compare the diffuseness of Chaucer's House of Fame with the condensation of Pope's treatment in his Temple of Fame. Shelley has been already quoted in illustration of diffuseness for the expression of intense feeling; and with him such cases are abundant. Take the following as a longer passage :— The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness, Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, The idea of intense delight is all that is expressed in the words; yet the intensity is such that this profusion of utterance for it is both natural and pleasing. Or:- I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt |