obtrusive signs of structure abound, in the form of connectives, words of transition, inversions for adjustment, and the like; devices that lead the reader onward, and keep him aware of the stages of progress, without seeming to do so. These are the "internal indications of plan," which have already been mentioned (page 265) as demanding the first care in determining the structure. Such indications of structure are elements of discourse in which we find increasing care and copiousness as writers gain more experience of the interpreting capacities of their readers. Young writers are too apt to neglect them, and their work becomes blind and vague in consequence. Older writers see better the helpfulness, and are less sensitive to the formality, of laying out their thoughts as thoroughly as may be useful for clearness and definiteness.

ILLUSTRATIONS. -1. The following, from De Quincey, will of course be recognized as rather overdoing the matter:

"Under this original peculiarity of Paganism, there arose two consequences, which I will mark by the Greek letters a and B. The latter I will notice in its order, first calling the reader's attention to the consequence marked a, which is this," etc.

2. Consider, on the other hand, the helpfulness of the following indications of structure, in a chapter on "The Mountain Villa," in Ruskin's Poetry of Architecture. There are no numerals employed; but the transitional paragraphs, together with the opening sentences from several successive paragraphs, will show how the progress of the thought is marked.

"We have contemplated the rural dwelling of the peasant; let us next consider the ruralized domicile of the gentleman: and here, as before, we shall first determine what is theoretically beautiful, and then observe how far our expectations are fulfilled in individual buildings. But a few preliminary observations are necessary.

"Man, the peasant, is a being of more marked national character, than the educated and refined. [Paragraph of amplification.]

man,

"Again: man, in his hours of relaxation, when he is engaged in the pursuits of mere pleasure, is less national than when he is under the influence of any of the more violent feelings which agitate every-day life. [Paragraph of amplification.]

"Without further preface, therefore, let us endeavor to ascertain what would be theoretically beautiful, on the shore, or among the scenery of the

Larian Lake, preparatory to a sketch of the general features of those villas which exist there, in too great a multitude to admit, on our part, of much individual detail.

For the general tone of the scenery, we may refer, etc.

"Now, as to the situation of the cottage, we have already seen, etc... but we cannot have this extreme humility in the villa, etc.

"As regards the form of the cottage, we have seen, etc. . . . But... the villa must be placed where, etc.

"We shall now proceed to the situation and form of the villa. As regards situation, etc.

"We shall now consider the form of the villa." Etc.

Thus, for page after page, the reader is conducted through a consecutive and naturally developing thought.

SECTION THIRD.

AMPLIFICATION.

In the construction of the plan, the main ideas of the discourse have been determined, in their mutual relations, from beginning to end. As yet, however, they are expressed only in germ. They need to be taken up anew and endowed with life; to be clothed in a fitting dress of explanatory, illustrative, and enforcing thought. This is the office of rhetorical amplification.

Amplification, the final process of composition, is the meetingground of invention and style; the process, that is, wherein questions of matter and manner must share equally the writer's attention. Whatever, therefore, is introduced at this stage into the production must stand a double test; and the question how a thing shall be said is as vital to the life of the production as is the question what the thing said shall be.

The Writer's Mood in Amplification. — To carry on the work of amplification requires a different mood from that in which the plan was made. That required severe discriminating thought; this requires fervid thinking. That was the work of intellect and judgment, gathering, weighing, and distributing the main thoughts

ness.

of the discourse, with a view to their logical order and effectiveThis requires also that the writer enter into his work with heart and feeling; he must himself be fired with the emotion he would impart to others, or inspired with the greatness and importance of his thought, else his work will be but tedious and lifeless. Having determined on his plan, let him surrender himself fearlessly to the current of his thought; let him be filled and fired with it anew, as if it had not been coldly analyzed. Nor should he be the slave of his own prearranged plan of discourse; that is, he should not let it chill the glow of his thinking. The mind often works more vigorously in amplification than in planning; and so the progress of actual composition may suggest a better arrangement of some points. If so, let the work of planning be reopened; and let not the writer shun the rewriting and rearranging thus necessitated. Let every smallest part, as it passes under the creative process, be for the time as important as the whole discourse, until every detail can be viewed as adapted to promote its own purpose and the purpose of the whole.

I. USES OF AMPLIFICATION.

Amplification not always of Advantage. It is not always necessary to the life and distinction of a thought that it be followed out in detailed, amplified form. Not infrequently the very opposite treatment is more effective. Some ideas, from their nature or from the part they play in the composition, should be expressed as tersely and sententiously as possible, or should be merely hinted and left to work their way by suggestion. It gives vigor to the work when a considerable proportion of such condensed material is interspersed with the rest; and indeed it may be said that all the leading ideas, if expanded in some places, should be contracted to a brief and telling statement in others. "The art of putting things," so that much shall be said in little space, is a very valuable accomplishment.1

1 "Every expedient which reduces circumlocutory expression promotes the power and the habit of condensed thinking. A taste for short words, for Saxon words.

An indication of the estimate people set on unamplified thought is seen in the fact that every nation has its distinct body of gnomic or aphoristic literature, in the shape of popular proverbs, bons mots, pregnant phrases, and the like. These all represent practical thought and precept reduced to its most sententious form; and there is perhaps no other form of literature that exerts more influence, and gives more universal pleasure.

NOTE. Some of the best known collections of aphoristic truth are: The Book of Proverbs, Pascal's Thoughts, Poor Richard's Sayings, Hare's Guesses at Truth, and Helps's Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd. Besides these the works of such writers as Bacon, Landor, and Emerson are valued as being especially rich in wise and pithy sayings.

The fact that amplification may or may not be of advantage dictates that in the articulation of his work the writer keep constantly in mind the demands of proportion. Not all ideas will bear to be repeated and particularized, without overbalancing their true proportionate importance. Some should be dispatched in a mere suggestion, or occupy only the subordinate clause of a sentence; while others may require several sentences, or even be worthy of a digression or excursus. The maintenance of a true proportion in the relative bulk and prominence of ideas is one of the most delicate problems of invention.

NOTE. — In McMaster's “History of the American People,” which aims in five volumes to delineate our country's progress from the Revolution to the Civil War, the description of our forefathers' domestic surroundings, interesting and valuable though it is, would seem to be carried to disproportionate minuteness in the following:

"In the corners of the rooms, or on the landing of the stairs, stood the high clocks of English make, many of which yet remain to attest the excellence of the manufacture. Some were surmounted by an allegorical representation of

for unqualified substantives, for crisp sentences, helps the thinking power to work in close quarters. A writer who acquires a fondness for speaking brevities learns to think in brevities. Happy is the man whose habit it is to think laconically. There are few things in which the reaction of style on thought and on the thinking force is so obvious as in the growth of this condensing power." — Phelps, "Theory of Preaching," p. 447.

Time. Others had a moving disk to illustrate the phases of the moon and show when it was crescent, when in the second quarter, and when full. Still others at the final stroke of every hour chimed forth a tune which, when the Sabbath came round, was such a one as our grandfathers sang to their hymns in meeting."

If in all parts the detail were carried down to so fine a point as the classification of clocks in private dwellings, where would the history be at the end of the fifth volume?

Why Amplify at All?-Of course the foregoing praise of sententious expression contemplates only one side of the literary art. Amplification also has its indispensable uses; it is by no means synonymous with platitude, nor is it mere dilution of the thought. Detailed thought is as necessary in its place as laconic thought. What purpose then does amplification subserve?

Three principal uses may be noted and exemplified.

1. To give the true extent, limits, and applications of the idea. As briefly given or indicated, an assertion may be too sweeping; or it may be a half-truth needing to be guarded and supplemented; or its present application may be unusual, needing therefore to be defined. To provide for such relations of the idea is the office of amplifying comment.

ILLUSTRATION. —This use of amplification may be exemplified by the beginning of Carlyle's essay on "Characteristics," of which the sententia, or ground assertion is,

THE HEALTHY KNOW NOT OF THEIR HEALTH, BUT ONLY THE SICK. The writer's first step with this is to broaden its application, for his present purpose:

"this is the Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right or working wrong."

2. To give body to an idea, by dwelling on it long enough for the reader's mind to grasp and realize it. "Time must be given," says De Quincey, 1" for the intellect to eddy about a truth, and to

1 De Quincey, Essay on "Style," Part I.