wished most to emphasize: the independence, and yet the similarity of each of the three stages of composi tion, sentences, paragraphs, and wholes. I chose, then, deliberately to crowd my lecture about sentences, and perhaps in some degree unduly to expand this one about whole compositions. What success has attended my work, you can judge better than I. If it has served clearly to define what I conceive to be the chief facts about the elements of style, it has done all I could venture to hope.

In few words, I have tried to make clear that good use, and nothing else, is what ultimately makes words, alone or in composition, significant of ideas,— anything more than arbitrary marks or sounds. Only within its limits can we possibly apply any principles at all; but when we have once learned to recognize its limits, and begin to inquire how within these limits we may best exert ourselves, we find that in all three. elements of composition there are three traits to which we may well attend: the substance of the composition, its outward form, and its inner structure. And we find that our consideration of each of these traits is much aided by a definite rule. If in considering the substance of a sentence, or of a paragraph, or of a whole, we remind ourselves of the principle of Unity, - that each composition should group itself about one central idea, we shall find the question of what a given composition may best include a great deal easier to answer than without such help. And so when we remind ourselves that each composition sentence,

paragraph, or whole-should be so massed that the parts we wish to make most notable may most readily catch the eye; and that in any composition-sentence, paragraph, or whole-the relation of part to part should be unmistakable. As we study these principles afresh with each element of style, we get to know the principles better and better, and to appreciate at once, I think, their value and their elasticity.

If we have followed all this with reasonable care, we need hardly stop here to remind ourselves again that for convenience' sake we have phrased these principles much more dogmatically than we are warranted in phrasing them. The single thing about which we may always risk positive assertion in matters concerning style is good use. Within the limits of that the only real question is what effects we have in mind. In by far the greater number of cases that present themselves, we wish to produce an effect of definite, firm mastery of the matter in hand. With such an object in view, there is no plan better than so far as good use will permit deliberately to obey the principles we have formulated; but if the effect we wish to produce be other than the ordinary one I have just mentioned, a deliberate disregard of the principles may often help us to produce it. Nothing, for example, can better produce an effect of confusion than deliberate violation of unity; nothing better an effect of weakness than deliberate anti-climax; and so on. In short, with every new literary plan, a new problem arises; and that problem a writer cannot with cer

tainty settle for himself without a very clear understanding of just the effect he wishes to produce.

In our consideration of words, of sentences, and of paragraphs, we reached this same point; and here there is little need to dwell on it. We all remember that every word not only names an idea, but suggests along with the idea it names a greater or smaller number of others. We all remember that as words are composed, not only their denotations are put together, but their connotations too. And the same is true when sentences are composed in paragraphs, and paragraphs in whole compositions. In Thackeray's description of Brussels during Waterloo, for example, the battle is mostly connoted. The effect, in short, which any composition, large or small, produces, is just like the effect that any word produces, a question of denotation and of connotation combined in ways that as the art of composition grows finer become almost infinitely subtile.

And now it may be worth while once more to sum up what I have said about the elements of style, — the visible features of which every composition must be made up: All style must consist of words, composed in sentences, composed in paragraphs, composed in whole compositions. Our choice of words is absolutely controlled by good use; but within its limits we are able, by varying the kinds and the number of our words, to produce a great variety of effects. Our composition of sentences must be largely controlled by good use, in the form of grammar and idiom; but within its limits

we are again able to produce a great variety of effects, by varying the kinds of our sentences and by applying to all kinds the principles of Unity, of Mass, and of Coherence. In our composition of paragraphs and of wholes, we are little trammelled by good use; so we may vary our effects by the application of these principles almost as we please. Modern style may be regarded, then, as the result of a constant and by no means finished contest between good use and the principles of composition. And, finally, realizing that any effect in style must be produced only by means of our composition of the elements, we should never forget that in our choice and our composition alike there are two things to keep in mind: their denotation,— what they name; and their connotation, — what they suggest.

VI.

CLEARNESS.

To this point we have been considering the outward and visible aspect of style. Henceforth we shall approach the subject in another way. Of a given piece of style we shall ask ourselves, not what it consists of, but what effect it produces. We shall concern ourselves chiefly, not with its elements, but with its qualities. Widely various as the impressions which style can make evidently are, they may, we have seen, be summed up under three and only three headings. In the first place, any piece of style appeals to the understanding; we understand it, or we do not understand it, or we are doubtful whether we understand it or not; in other words, it has an intellectual quality. In the second place, it either interests us, or bores us, or leaves us indifferent; it appeals to our emotions; it has an emotional quality. Finally, it either pleases us, or displeases us, or leaves us neither pleased nor offended; it appeals to our taste; it has a quality which I may call æsthetic. Under one of these headings, as I have said, fall in a general way all the qualities of style which I have discovered. We shall discuss these three headings in turn: the intellectual