Great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now thrown overboard,
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, .
And half our sailors swallowed in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still. Is 't meet that he
Should leave the helm, and, like a fearful lad,
With tearful eyes, add water to the sea,

And give more strength to that which hath too much,
While in his moan the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?
Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!
SHAKESPEARE.

The unwonted lines which momentary passion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and open brow gradually melted away, as his young friend spoke, like the marks of a black lead pencil beneath the softening influence of India rubber. DICKENS.

When thus, as I may say, before the use of the loadstone, or knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean, without other help than the pole-star of the ancients, and the rules of the French stage among the moderns. — DRYDEN.

Once as I told in glee

Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning but tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,

On that dark heart of mine

Fell their soft splendor.

Longfellow.

Since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wrecked in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldst take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of the punishment thou deservest. - ANON.

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm in the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. SHAKESPEARE.

England ne'er had a king until his time;
Virtue he had, deserving to command;

His brandished sword did blind men with its beams;
His arms spread wider than a dragon's wings;
His sparkling eyes, replete with awful fire,
More dazzled, and drove back his enemies,
Than midday sun fierce beat against their faces.
What should I say? his deeds exceed all speech;
He never lifted up his hand, but conquered.

SHAKESPEARE.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone,

And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For out of Thought's interior sphere
Those wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date

With Andes and with Ararat. EMERSON.

NOTE

66

In addition to the extracts here given, the student might examine those connected with previous chapters, and discover the various figures they contain. Furthermore, it is recommended that he study the figures in a whole piece; as Milton's "L'Allegro" or "Il Penseroso," Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," Gray's "Elegy," Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night," Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality," Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner," Moore's "Paradise and the Peri," Shelley's "Adonais," Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur," Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," Lowell's " Vision of Sir Launfal," and many others that will occur to the teacher. Let him determine the percentage of figurative sentences, and compare the results with those obtained from an examination of the prose of Macaulay, Ruskin, Carlyle, De Quincey, Lowell, and other standard writers. This comparison will throw light on the essential difference between poetry and prose.

CHAPTER VI

STYLE

39. Definition. Style means an author's mode of expression. It is not, as is sometimes supposed, an artificial trick, but a genuine expression of the mind and character. Buffon had the right idea when he said, "The style is the man." It derives its leading characteristics from the intellect, culture, and character of the writer. A man of independent force and integrity gives natural expression to his personality. His style reveals his mental and moral qualities. Only weaklings, who are afraid to be natural and who are destitute of substantial worth, become conscious imitators or affect artificial peculiarities.

We have already considered style as related to diction, different kinds of sentences, and figures of speech. It remains to consider it, first, in relation to the various kinds of discourse, and, secondly, to the generic types of mind.

40. Kinds of Discourse. There are four generic kinds of discourse, namely, description, narration, exposition, and argument. Though frequently united in the same work, or even in the same paragraph, they are yet clearly distinguishable. Each has a well-defined purpose and method, to which the mode of expression is naturally bent or adapted. The result is what may be

called a descriptive, narrative, expository, or argumentative style. These different kinds of discourse will now be considered and illustrated in greater detail.

(1) Description is the portrayal of an object by means of language. The object described may belong either to the material or the spiritual world. It may be a single flower, a landscape, or a stellar system. The purpose of description is to enable the reader to reproduce the scene, object, or experience in his own imagination. In general there are two kinds of description, the objective and the subjective; but the laws of both are the same. There must be a judicious selection and grouping of the details, and their number must be so restricted as not to produce confusion.

Objective description portrays objects as they exist in the external world. It points out in succession their distinguishing features. Thus we read in Wordsworth's

"A Night Piece,"

"The traveller looks up- the clouds are split
Asunder and above his head he sees

-

The clear moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives; how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not! - the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent; - still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault

Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds."

Subjective description notes the effects produced by an external object or scene on the mind and heart. The eye of the writer is turned inward rather than