CHAPTER X.

FORMS OF EXPRESSION.

What I would therefore recommend to you is, that before you sit down to write on any subject you would spend some days in considering it, putting down at the same time, in short hints, every thought which occurs to you as proper to make a part of your intended piece. When you have thus obtained a collection of the thoughts, examine them carefully with this view, to find which of them is proper to be presented first to the mind of the reader, that he, being possessed of that, may be better disposed to receive what you intend for the second; and thus I would have you put a figure before each thought to mark its future place in your composition. For so every preceding composition preparing the mind for that which is to follow, and the reader often anticipating it, he proceeds with ease and pleasure and approbation, as seeming continually to meet his own thoughts. In this mode you have a chance for a perfect production; because the mind attending first to the sentiments alone, next to the method alone, each part is likely to be better performed, and, I think, too, in less time.- DR. FRANKLIN.

THE several kinds of composition may be considered under four general types.

Description.—Description is the exhibition of the coexistent parts and qualities of an object, real or imaginary, material or spiritual, by means of words. It is akin to drawing, painting, sculpture. It cannot equal them in vividness, but what they can only suggest, it can fully recount. Its picture contains more information, more thought, more enlivening touches. How much, for instance, does Byron add to the expressive power of marble in his fervid lines on the dying gladiator:

I see before me the Gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low—

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him he is gone

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who

won.

He heard it, but he heeded not- his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away.
He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay.
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday-

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All this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire

And unavenged?— Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! Description is often said to be objective when it relates to things perceptible by the senses; subjective, when it relates to things cognizable by the mind. The former, which includes the works of nature and of art, whether in rest or in motion, is most conspicuous in books of travel or adventure, in writings which give an account of cities. or civilized countries, as Kane's voyages to the Arctic regions, Livingstone's explorations in Africa, Prescott's histories of Mexico and Peru. The latter refers especially to the delineation of mental states, as in Satan's or Hamlet's soliloquy; of the moral and intellectual faculties, as in scientific treatises; of individual character, as in biographies; of emotions, as seen in the face. The second, like the first, regards natural scenery and human handiwork, but it does so interpretatively, reflectively. Thus the one, the more internal, often arises from the other, the more external; and both are intermingled, as in Carlyle's portrayal of Cromwell's personal features:

Massive stature; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect ; wart above the right eyebrow; nose of considerable, blunt, aquiline proportions; strict, yet copious lips; full of all tremulous sensibilities; and also, if need be, of all fiercenesses and rigors; deep, loving eyes call them grave, call them stern-looking from under those

craggy brows as if in lifelong sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labor and endeavor.

Again, if objects are delineated in succession and detail, pretty much as their aspects might appear to a spectator who from an eminence allows his gaze to wander here and there irregularly, the description is said to be panoramic, as in Goldsmith's Traveller, Longfellow's Building of the Ship, and Defoe's Voyage Round the World. Thus:

They [the Spaniards] had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. It was that of the valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as more commonly called by the natives; which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before them. In the highly rarefied atmosphere of these upper regions, even remote objects have a brilliancy of coloring and a distinctness of outline which seem to annihilate distance. Stretching far away at their feet, were seen noble forests of oak, sycamore, and cedar, and beyond yellow fields of maize, and the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and blooming gardens; for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abundant in this populous valley than in other parts of Anahuac. In the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger portion of its surface than at present, their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets; and in the midst like some Indian empress with her coronal of pearls-the fair city of Mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters -the far-famed Venice of the Aztecs.' High over all rose the royal hill of Chapultepec, the residence of the Mexican monarchs, crowned with the same grove of gigantic cypresses which at this day fling their broad shadows over the land. In the distance beyond the blue waters of the lake, and nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a shining speck, the rival capital of Tezcuco; and still further on, the dark belt of porphyry, girdling the valley around, like a rich setting which nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels. Such was the beautiful vision which broke on the eyes of the conquerors.-Prescott.

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If, however, the parts are grouped for artistic effect about some common centre, which, in the midst of particulars, is kept constantly in view, the description is called scenic. Macaulay thus presents the interior of Westminster Hall at the trial of Warren Hastings, the accused being the central figure of the brilliant assemblage:

The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous realm grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated around the queen the fairhaired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. There the embassadors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen side by side the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labors on that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition -a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There, too, was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hanging of Mrs. Montague; and there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone around Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire.

Usually, in objective description, it will promote unity and definiteness to characterize the whole, the contents being given in the order that they occupy in the plan. A field, for example, is triangular, quadrangular, etc.; a hill, conical, or truncated; a town, circular and compact, or long and straggling; a tract of country, heart-shaped. The outline, the size, a central object, or an epithet may furnish the desired comprehensive type, generally, though not always, stated first:

The battle of Waterloo was fought on a piece of ground resembling a capital A. The English were at the apex, the French at the feet, and the battle was decided about the centre.- Victor Hugo.

So work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts:
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.-Shakespeare.

Care must be taken that the points selected shall be not self-contradictory or trivial, but true, and, as far as possible, new, essential, striking; determinate and concrete, such as particularize strongly; harmonious, such as blend readily into one image; concisely and simply put, so as not to weary the attention by exaggerating or overloading. These directions are comprehended in this: