HINTS ON COMPOSITION.

1. Composition is the art of putting sentences together.

(i) Any one can make a sentence; but every one cannot make a sentence that is both clear and neat. We all speak and write sentences every day; but these sentences may be neat or they may be clumsythey may be pleasant to read, or they may be dull and heavy.

(ii) Sir Arthur Helps says: "A sentence should be powerful in its substantives, choice and discreet in its adjectives, nicely correct in its verbs; not a word that could be added, nor one which the most fastidious would venture to suppress; in order, lucid; in sequence, logical; in method, perspicuous."

2. The manner in which we put our sentences together is called style. That style may be good or bad; feeble or vigorous; clear or obscure. The whole purpose of style, and of studying style, is to enable us to present our thoughts to others in a clear, forcible, and yet graceful way.

"Style is but the order and the movement that we put into our thoughts. If we bind them together closely, compactly, the style becomes firm, nervous, concise. If they are left to follow each other negligently, the style will be diffuse, slipshod, and insipid."-BUFFON.

3. Good composition is the result of three things: (i) clear thinking; (ii) reading the best and most vigorous writers; and (iii) frequent practice in writing, along with careful polishing of what we have written.

(i) We ought to read diligently in the best poets, historians, and essayists, to read over and over again what strikes us as finely or nobly or powerfully expressed,—to get by heart the most striking passages in a good author. This kind of study will give us a large stock of appropriate words and striking phrases; and we shall never be at a loss for the right words to express our own sense.

Ben Jonson says: "For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: let him read the best authors; observe the best speakers; and have much exercise of his own style."

(ii) "My mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a-year: and to that discipline,-patient, accurate, and resolute,-I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature.”—JOHN RUSKIN.

(iii) But, though much reading of the best books and a great deal of practice in composition are the only means to attain a good and vigorous style, there are certain directions—both general and special-which may be of use to the young student, when he is beginning.

GENERAL DIRECTIONS.

4. We must know the subject fully about which we are going

to write.

(i) If we are going to tell a story, we must know all the circumstances; the train of events that led up to the result; the relations of the persons in the story to each other; what they said; and the outcome of the whole at the close. These considerations guide us to

Practical Rule I.-Draw up on a piece of paper a short skeleton of what you are going to write about.

(i) Archbishop Whately says: "The more briefly this is done, so that it does but exhibit clearly the heads of the composition, the better; because it is important that the whole of it be placed before the eye and mind in a small compass, and be taken in, as it were, at a glance; and it should be written, therefore, not in sentences, but like a table of contents. Such an outline should not be allowed to fetter the writer, if, in the course of the actual composition, he find any reason for deviating from his original plan,-it should serve merely as a track to mark out a path for him, not as a groove to confine him."

(ii) Cobbett says: "Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write."

5. Our sentences must be written in good English.

Good English is simply the English of the best writers; and we can only learn what it is by reading the books of these writers. Good writers

of the present century are such authors as Charles Lamb, Jane Austen, Scott, Coleridge, Landor, Macaulay, Thackeray, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Froude, Ruskin, and George Eliot.

6. Our sentences must be written in pure English.

(i) This rule forbids the use of obsolete or old-fashioned words, such as erst, peradventure, hight, beholden, vouchsafe, methinks, etc.

(ii) It forbids also the use of slang expressions, such as awfully, jolly, rot, bosh, smell a rat, see with half an eye, etc.

(iii) It forbids the employment of technical terms, unless these are absolutely necessary to express our meaning; and this is sure to be the case in a paper treating on a scientific subject. But technical terms in an ordinary piece of writing, such as quantitative, connotation, anent, chromatic, are quite out of place.

(iv) In obedience to this rule, we ought also carefully to avoid the use of foreign words and phrases. Affectation of all kinds is disgusting; and it both looks and is affected to use such words as confrère, raison d'être, amour propre, congé, etc.

(v) This recommendation also includes the Practical Rule: When an English-English (or 'Saxon') and a Latin-English word offer themselves, we had better choose the Saxon."

(vi) The following is from an article by Leigh Hunt: "In the Bible there are no Latinisms; and where is the life of our language to be found in such perfection as in the translation of the Bible? We will venture to affirm that no one is master of the English language who is not well read in the Bible, and sensible of its peculiar excellences. It is the pure well of English. The taste which the Bible forms is not a taste for big words, but a taste for the simplest expression or the clearest medium of presenting ideas. Remarkable it is that most of the sublimities in the Bible are conveyed in monosyllables. For example, 'Let there be light: and there was light.' Do these words want any life that Latin could lend them? . . . The best styles are the freest from Latinisms; and it may be almost laid down as a rule that a good writer will never have recourse to a Latinism if a Saxon word will equally serve his purpose. We cannot dispense with words of Latin derivation; but there should be the plea of necessity for resorting to them, or we wrong our English."

(vii) At the same time, it must not be forgotten that we very often are compelled by necessity to use Latin words. Even Leigh Hunt, in the above passage, has been obliged to do so while declaiming against it. This is apparent from the number of words printed in italics, all of which are derived from Latin. This is most apparent in the phrase equally serve his purpose, which we could not now translate into "pure" English.

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7. Our sentences must be written in accurate English. That is, the words used must be appropriate to the sense we wish to convey. Accuracy is the virtue of using "the right word in the right place."

(i) "The attempt was found to be impracticable." Now, impracticable means impossible of accomplishment. Any one may attempt anything; carrying it out is a different thing. The word used should have been design or plan.

(ii) "The veracity of the statement was called in question." Veracity is the attribute of a person; not of a statement.

(iii) Accurate English can only be attained by the careful study of the different shades of meaning in words; by the constant comparison of synonyms. Hence we may lay down the

Practical Rule II.-Make a collection of synonyms, and compare the meanings of each couple (i) in a dictionary, and (ii) in a sentence.

The following are a few, the distinctions between which are very apparent :—

That is, the

8. Our sentences should be perfectly clear.

reader, if he is a person of ordinary common-sense, should not be left for a moment in doubt as to our meaning.

(i) A Roman writer on style says: "Care should be taken, not that the reader may understand if he will, but that he shall understand whether he will or not."

(ii) Our sentences should be as clear as "mountain water flowing over a rock." They should "economise the reader's attention."

(iii) Clearness is gained by being simple, and by being brief.

(iv) Simplicity teaches us to avoid (a) too learned words, and (b) roundabout ways of mentioning persons and things.

(a) We ought, for example, to prefer