EIGHT LECTURES GIVEN AT THE LOWELL BY BARRETT WENDELL Professor of English at Harvard College AUTHOR OF A LITERARY HISTORY OF AMERICA, WILLIAM LITERATURE," ETC. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON NOTE. Any THESE lectures were given at the Lowell Institute, Boston, in November and December, 1890. student of the subject will at once perceive my obligation to the textbooks of Professor A. S. Hill, Professor Bain, Professor Genung, and the late Professor McElroy. My excuse for offering a new treatment of the subject is that I have found none that seemed quite simple enough for popular reading. BOSTON, September, 1891. B. W. NOTE FOR TEACHERS Using Wendell's English Composition. Inquiries concerning the use of this book in teaching lead me to add this statement of how I have used it at Harvard College. In the course where I regularly use it as a text-book, compositions, called themes, of from five hundred to a thousand words, are written every fortnight. On the introductory chapter, which I direct the class to read at once, I do not formally examine the students at all; but I expect them to have read it intelligently before writing the first theme. Between the first theme and the second, I direct them to read the chapter on Words, the suggestions in which they are advised particularly to consider in writing the second theme. When this theme is handed in, each student takes the theme of a fellowstudent and devotes an hour to making, in the class-room, a written analysis of its vocabulary. In this work he is guided by the following plan, sketched on a blackboard: WORDS: 1. Grammatical Purity: a. Barbarism. 2. Kinds of Words: a. Latin or Saxon. b. Long or short. c. General or specific. d. Figurative or literal, 3. Number of Words. 4. Denotation and Connotation. At the close of the hour each criticism is folded within the |