plating the thought in order to apprehend it; and amplify the expression accordingly. He should, likewise, consult the state of the hearer's mind at the time. When the mind is excited and attentive, the apprehension is quicker than when it is dull and uninterested. In the more animated parts of the discourse, accordingly, greater brevity is admissible. It is then less necessary to amplify the thought -to carry out the expression to perfect completeness. Brief hints and suggestions may be sufficient to put the hearers in possession of the entire thought.

Repetition is generally to be preferred to obscurity or ambiguity. Dr. Campbell exemplifies this principle by the following passage, in which the words, his father, are repeated three times without disagreeable effect. "We said to my lord, The lad cannot leave his father; for if he should leave his father, his father would die."

The following sentences are faulty in this respect:

If he delights in these studies, he can have enough of them. He may bury himself in them as deeply as he pleases. He may revel in them incessantly, and eat, drink, and clothe himself with them.

How immense the difference between the pious and profane.

§ 316. Clearness, as depending on the relation of the parts of the sentence, is affected

1. By the use of the relative words in it;

2. By the arrangement of the different members; and

3. By the interposition of parenthetical clauses.

§ 317. Relative words may either be too remotely separated from their antecedents, or may be of ambiguous reference.

The following are examples of this class of faults: a. Too remotely separated;

God heapeth favors on his servants ever liberal and faithful.

b. Of ambiguous reference;*

Lysias promised to his father never to abandon his friends. Dr. Prideaux used to relate that when he brought the copy of his "Connection of the Old and New Testaments” to the bookseller, he told him it was a dry subject, and the printing could not be safely ventured upon unless he could enliven the work with a little humor.

Thus I have fairly given you, Sir, my own opinion as well as that of a great majority of both houses here, relating to this weighty affair; upon which I am confident, you may securely reckon.

They were summoned occasionally by their kings, when compelled by their wants and by their foes to have recourse to their aid.

He conjured the senate, that the purity of his reign might not be stained by the blood even of a guilty senator.

He atoned for the murder of an innocent son, by the execution perhaps of a guilty wife.

Their intimacy had commenced in the happier period, perhaps, of their youth and obscurity.

We do those things frequently that we repent of afterwards.

Sixtus the Fourth, was, if I mistake not, a great collector of books at least.--Bolingbroke.

Reinhard in his Memoirs and Confessions says, "I have always had considerable difficulty in making a proper use of pronouns. Indeed, I have taken great pains so to use them, that all ambiguity by the reference to a wrong antecedent should be impossible, and yet have often failed in the attempt. · That it is difficult to

avoid all obscurity of this kind I am ready to acknowledge. It can often be done only by completely changing the train of thought and easting it into another form.-Letter III, Boston Ed. pp. 102—3.

It is folly to pretend to arm ourselves against the accidents of life, by heaping up treasures, which nothing can protect us against, but the good providence of our Heavenly Father, Sherlock.

Men look with an evil eye upon the good that is in others, and think that their reputation obscures them, and that their commendable qualities do stand in their light; and therefore they do what they can to cast a cloud over them, that the bright shining of their virtues may not obscure them.-Tillotson.

This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage to undertake.-Johnson.

$318. In respect to the arrangement of the members of a sentence, clearness requires

1. That the parts of the complex thought be presented in their relative prominence and dependence; 2., That the related clauses be kept in close proximity; and

3. That the order be such as to indicate the dependence and connection.

1. Relation of leading and subordinate thoughts. This relation is not regarded in the following sentences:

After we came to anchor, they put me on shore, where I was welcomed by all my friends, who received me with the greatest kindness.

In this sentence, it is difficult to tell which is the leading thought; or on which circumstance the writer intended to fix the attention of his readers. The unity of the sentence, by the failure to express the due subordination of the parts, is destroyed. The same fault is seen in the following sen

tences:

The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure for two different things, and not only calls the followers or votaries

of them by several names of busy and idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of the mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first wisdom, and of the other wit, which is a Saxon word, that is used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call ingenio, and the French esprit, both from the Latin; but I think wit more peculiarly signifies that of poetry, as may occur upon remarks on the Runic language.-Temple.

He is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner, near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced in literature, to his own house, where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education.-Johnson's Life of Prior.

2. Proximity of related clauses. The following sentences offend against this principle of clearness.

The moon was casting a pale light on the numerous graves that were scattered before me, as it peered above the horizon, when I opened the small gate of the church-yard.

There will, therefore, be two trials in this town at that time, which are punishable with death, if a full court should attend.

Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome observation on Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to Æneas, in the following words.

3. Order of dependence. In the following sentences it is difficult to determine which is the subject and which the object of the verb:

And thus the son the fervent sire addressed.

The rising tomb a lofty column bore.

In the following, the dependence of the Italicised clause is obscurely represented:

As it is necessary to have the head clear as well as the

complexion, to be perfect in this part of learning, I rarely mingle with the men, but frequent the tea-tables of the ladies. In the following sentence obscurity is occasioned by the position of the relative word before its antecedent:

When a man declares in autumn, when he is eating them, or in spring when there are none, that he loves grapes

319. Clearness is often violated by the introduction of long parenthetical clauses, and especially of parentheses containing other parentheses within themselves.

The writings of the Apostle Paul, which are characterised more by energy than by clearness, are remarkable for this introduction of long and involved parentheses. A remarkable instance occurs in his epistle to the Ephesians. The subject of the verb is in the first verse of the third chapter, while the verb itself is in the first verse of the fourth. The following extracts furnish further exemplifications of the same fault.

It was an ancient tradition, that when the capitol was founded by one of the Roman Kings, the god Terminus, who presided over boundaries, and was represented according to the fashion of that age, by a large stone, alone, among all the inferior deities, refused to yield his place to Jupiter himself.-Gibbon's Rome.

The description Ovid gives of his situation, in that first period of his existence, seems, some poetical embellishments excepted, such as, were we to reason a priori, we should conclude he was placed in.-Lancaster on Delicacy.