English Composition & Rhetoric

of what pertains to the Expository art will be found distributed throughout the several topics as now arranged. Still, there is room for separate Manuals, giving an exhaustive treatment of the Kinds of Composition, under their own specific designations, as in the first Rhetoric, where there remain a number of suggestions, as well as illustrations, that have not been transferred to the present work.

As with the Figures, so with the other portions, the laws governing the efficiency of the various devices of style are sedulously applied to individual cases.

It appears to me to be a possible thing, to arrive at a definite code of prescriptions for regulating the Intellectual Qualities of composition. Granting that a

certain progress has been made towards this consummation, the fact would seem to mark out the department as a fit subject for school discipline, at the proper stage; not to mention its direct bearing upon the valuable accomplishment of writing well. The several topics embraced are mostly on a level as regards ease of comprehension; and the exposition is conducted with the view of bringing the pupil's own judgment into play. The concluding subject of the volume- the quality named Picturesqueness, is properly an introduction to Part Second, but does not very deeply involve the peculiar niceties inseparable from the Emotional Qualities.

The exemplification is conducted partly by short instances adduced under the principles, and partly by the minute and critical analysis of passages of some length; both methods being essential to good teaching.

In most cases, the number of examples adduced for illustration and criticism has been purposely made

large, in order that the principles may be seen in the widest range of their application; and, for the same reason, they have been chosen from a considerable variety of English writers. In the discussion of individual passages, there is frequent room for difference of opinion as regards the judgments pronounced; nevertheless, the object in view is attained, if the pupil is exercised in comprehending the principles, and in discriminating their applications.

There is no attempt to provide additional exercises. These are best obtained in the readings that accompany instruction in literature. No one author, however eminent, is enough for the purpose of reference; and our miscellaneous reading-books are not as yet on a great enough scale. Fortunately, there is a valuable resource in the cheap reprints of English Classics that have lately become common. I may instance the Messrs. Chambers, as having taken a lead in this enterprise. In the Reprints, together with the Miscellany of Tracts, published by them, a little library can be selected for a very small sum, comprehensive enough to illustrate all the matters of importance in the fullest Rhetoric text-book.

The labour bestowed upon the present work, both in its original form and in the revision, has been incurred under the belief that, in any complete course of instruction in Literature, there must be a place for Rhetoric, as methodically expounded. What that place should be, I have discussed at length in a separate treatise, devoted to the entire question of Teaching English.

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