CHAPTER III.

OF ENERGY.

$320. ENERGY is that property in style by means of which the thought is impressed with a peculiar vividness or force on the mind addressed.

This property of style has been variously denominated, as vivacity, strength, and energy; all which terms, from their etymology, point at once to the nature of the property designated by them.

For the sake of clearness it will be convenient to consider this property in respect to its two species; as secured to style in accordance with the other properties, or only by a certain deviation from these properties. See $ 306.

$ 321. Energy is either proper or figurative. PROPER energy is secured to style in accordance with the other properties;

FIGURATIVE energy, by a greater or less deviation from them.

Without going out of the range of the other properties ated, it is obvious style may be more or less modified in accordance with their principles with a view to energetic effect. Such modifications, made with a view to such a vivid impression, come properly under consideration under the head of energy.

But discourse admits of modifications with a view to energy, which are not properly dictated by any principles that belong to these other properties. It is often turned from the direction in which it would flow if those properties alone controlled it. The verbal expression of thought as

thus turned from its natural course is termed figurative expression.

$322. Proper energy depends on the kind of words employed, the number and the arrangement of them in the sentence.

§ 323. Energy requires, in respect to the kinds of words employed, that

Those of Anglo-Saxon origin, be preferred to others; Those of national and popular use to barbarisms, whether foreign or technical; and

The more specific to the more generic and abstract.

It is unnecessary to add to the remarks already made under the head of clearness, § 312, in order to illustrate the truth and importance of this principle of style. It is sufficient to observe here that style admits of great modifications in respect to the kind of words habitually employed by the speaker, and that even great energy of thought may be lost in the selection of words that are wanting in this element of expression. It cannot, therefore, be too earnestly enjoined on the forming speaker to study those authors assiduously who are distinguished for their use of Anglo-Saxon, the strictly vernacular and the specific words of our language. It will generally be found that the same taste and the same training which have led to the habitual preference of one of these classes of words, have made, also, the others most familiar and pleasing. Care should be taken to make these classes of words form the body of sound,-the material in which the thoughts most easily and spontaneously invest themselves. That this is practicable is proved by the fact that men learn universally to think in the language which is spoken around them. As we have authors which are characterised by this excellence and others which abound in

Latin and French words and idioms, it is obvious the former should be habitually studied and committed to memory, while the others should be left for maturer reading. Conversation generally prefers Anglo-Saxon words. Even Dr. Johnson himself, in the familiarity and earnestness of his ordinary conversation, employed Anglo-Saxon words, which in his written discourse he unhappily translated into a latinized dialect.* Hence the study of language as employed in common life is highly useful to the orator in this respect.

§ 324. In respect to the number of words, the principle of energy is, that the utmost brevity consistent with clearness and with the other principles of energy, be preserved.

In the application of this principle, not only redundant words and phrases are to be avoided, but, also, the more direct and simple forms of expression are to be preferred to the more circuitous and prolix. Hence, often, the sentence should be wholly re-cast.

The following sentences are faulty in respect to this prin ciple:

I went home full of a great many serious reflections.

I shall suppose, then, in order to try to account for the vision without a miracle, that as Saul and his company

* Macaulay, in an article in the Edinburgh Review for 1831, gives the following exemplifications. In one of Johnson's familiar letters he says, "When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." He records this incident in his Journey to the Hebrides thus; "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes he translated aloud, "The Rehearsal," he said, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet;" then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

were journeying along in their way to Damascus, &4. £Xtraordinary meteor really did happen.

Neither is any condition of life more honorable in the sight of God than another, otherwise he would be a respecter of persons, which he assures us he is not.

It will often be greatly conducive to the energetic effect of the whole expression, after having presented the thought for the sake of clearness in a more extended form, to repeat it in a more condensed sentence.

The following extract from Burke will furnish an exemplification:

When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precaution of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the political code of all power, not standing on its own honor, and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

$ 325. Energy, in the arrangement of the parts of a sentence, depends,

First, On the preservation of unity in the general form of the sentence;

Secondly, On the right disposition of the capital words and members; and

Thirdly, On the disposition of coördinate or correlative words or members.

$ 326. UNITY in a sentence is preserved by the presentation of but one leading subject, $ 318, and by the binding together of all the parts in one compact whole.

The first element of unity here mentioned has been sufficiently considered under the head of clearness.

The second appears in style in the periodic structure, $ 269, in which the leading member of the sentence, being placed last, binds the whole together into one compact whole.

The following are examples of the periodic structure:

While all the Pagan nations consider Religion as one part of Virtue, the Jews, on the contrary, regard Virtue as a part of Religion.

For as guilt never rose from a true use of our rational faculties, so it is very frequently subversive of them. God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices.—Burke.

There is something in the present business, with all that is horrible to create aversion, so vilely loathsome, as to excite disgust. It is, my lords, surely superfluous to dwell on the sacredness of the ties, which those aliens to feeling, those apostates to humanity thus divided. In such an assembly, as the one before which I speak, there is not an eye but must look reproof to their conduct;—not a heart but must anticipate its condemnation.-Sheridan.

§ 327. The most conspicuous parts of the sentence being the commencement and the close, these parts should, when energy of expression is aimed at, be given to the capital or leading words and members.

This principle forbids commencing or closing a sentence with circumstantial words or clauses, unless it is desired to give them an emphatic distinction. In merely didactic discourse, such clauses are admissible because they often conduce to clearness and readiness of apprehension. In earnest oratory they can never be justified except, as has been just observed, when they are made emphatic. In this case,