Campbell remarks that our language contains many compound words in which there is redundancy: as, unto, until, selfsame, four-square, devoid, despoil, disannul, oftentimes, nowadays, downfall, furthermore, wherewithal. Sometimes terminations are added to words without a specific meaning: as, mountain, fountain, meadow, valley, island, climate; for mount, fount, &c. Again, we find double terminations of the same import, as in philosophical, tragical, political. In many such cases, the different words gradually acquire different senses-climate, clime; politic, political. Redundancy is permissible, for the surer conveyance of important meaning, for emphasis, and in the language of passion and of poetic embellishment. In giving directions and instructions, it may be right to add an explicit statement to what is already implied; as in military despatches and official instructions. "We have seen with our eyes," 99.66 we have heard with our ears," are redundancies that give emphasis to the action expressed. The epithets and amplifications of poetry may add nothing to the meaning, but they fulfil the end of the art, which is to give pleasure. "The breezy call of incense-breathing morn is an accumulation of picturesque circumstances to which the rules of brevity would not apply. Nevertheless, as the loading of style with epithets leads to the fault called Turgidity, it must be kept under the restrictions hereafter stated with reference to the quality of strength in composition. 63. III. CIRCUMLOCUTION means a diffuse mode of expression, such that the remedy for it is, not omission of parts, but the re-casting of the whole in terser language. The following is an example: "Pope professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportu nity was presented, he praised through the whole period of his existence with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if a comparison be instituted be, tween him and the man whose pupil he was!" Condensed thus:—"Pope professed himself the pupil of Dryden, whom he lost no opportunity of praising; and his character may be illustrated by a comparison with his master." A Paraphrase, or Commentary, which professes to explain something difficult or obscure, is often a kind of circumlocution. The devices of exposition will be fully stated hereafter. What is called the paraphrase is usually a diffuse rendering of the original. As applied to Scripture, Campbell and Whately both animadvert on the practice of expanding "every passage hard or easy, nearly to the same degree." Examples of the dilution of a forcible original in a paraphrase are cited by Macaulay, from Patrick :—" In the Song of Solomon is an exquisitely beautiful verse. 'I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love.' Patrick's version runs thus: 'So I turned myself to those of my neighbors and familiar acquaintance who were awakened by my cries to come and see what the matter was; and conjured them, as they would answer it to God, that, if they met with my beloved, they would let him know—What shall I say?—What shall I desire you to tell him, but that I do not enjoy myself now that I want his company, nor can be well till I recover his love again?'" The term paraphrastic has come to signify a style enfeebled by circumlocution. Prolixity expresses the accumulation of circumstances and particulars to the extent of encumbering the meaning. 99 66 There are lengthened forms used for giving emphasis and importance; as, "It would take a good deal of argument to convince me of that," instead of simply "I doubt that; If one were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, one would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." The periphrasis here is justified by the momentous nature of the fact to be introduced. Circumlocution may be employed with poetic effect, as in "Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished rolling in the fiery gulf." There is elegance in Cowley's periphrasis—" set himself up above all that was ever called sovereign in England." The Euphemism often takes the form of circumlocution, as in the following, commended by Longinus: "The appointed journey," for death; "The fallen are borne forth publicly by the state,"—that is, buried. CHAPTER III. ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS. 64. As the grammatical order of words is not always the best for effect, this order is frequently departed from in poetry, and sometimes in prose. Grammatically, in English, the subject precedes the predicate; and, in constructions containing a transitive verb, the order is subject, verb, object; but an altered order may add to the force of the expression. Thus the predicate may be placed first, "Great is the mystery of godliness." "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." "Silent they lie." "There appeared to them Moses and Elias." "The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild sea-mew." "Nabal (fool) is his name, and folly is with him." Campbell observes that our translation of the Bible has missed the effect of the original in the passage, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city." By placing the participle of the predicate first, the force is restored: "Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city." The verbal root may be made to precede the auxiliary in compound tenses; as, "go I must," "do it he shall." The object of the verb is brought forward to the place of emphasis in these examples: "Silver and gold have I none." "Such bursts of horrid thunder, Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never Remember to have heard." "They could take their rest, for they knew Lord Stratford watched. Him they feared, him they trusted, him they obeyed." The adverb, when unusually emphatic, is occasionally made to precede; as, "Up goes my grave Impudence to the maid." The negative adverb may thus be made emphatic. "Not in the legions Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damn'd "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," &c. The place immediately after a conjunction, adverb, or adverbial clause, beginning a sentence, is emphatic, as in Mil ton:— "At last his sail-iroad vans He spreads for flight." Also the place after the name of an object addressed: "Powers and dominions, deities of heaven,— Me, tho' just right and the fixed laws of heaven Among many nations there was no king like Solomon; nevertheless, even him did outlandish women cause to sin." Thirdly, the place after a call to attention; as, "Behold, now is the accepted time." In the following example, the inverted arrangement has to be aided by a pleonasm: "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?" The foregoing are Campbell's chief illustrations of the change of order for effect. We have still to see the reasons. PLACE OF QUALIFYING WORDS. 75 65. There are certain principles of arrangement that enable us more readily to apprehend the meaning of a complex statement.* The first is that qualifying words should precede the object that they qualify; as, a black horse, a decidedly favorable answer. This principle is otherwise expressed thus: "No concrete image should be suggested until the materials for it have been presented." The reason is, that if the name of the concrete thing is given first, "horse," for example, the image formed by the mind is likely to be wrong; probably a bay horse, as the most common, is pictured. Hence, when the word "black" is added, the mental image must be unmade; the bay color has to be suppressed and the black inserted, unless we have been accustomed to suspend the act of conceiving until all the expected qualifications are known. It is, therefore, better that the word black should prepare the way for the mention of horse. The English usage of placing the adjective before the noun is thus justified on principle. So with the adverb and the verb. As the predicate of a proposition modifies the subject, like an adjective immediately qualifying it, there is a ground for making the predicate precede the subject. The mention of "great" should precede "the mystery of godliness," as it is under the condition implied in "great" that the mystery is meant to be imagined. The following verse from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," although elliptical in its structure, illustrates the general principle :— "Alone, alone, all all alone, And never a saint took pity on When the predicate verb is accompanied by some limit or qualification as its complement, the limiting circumstances ought to come first. The priority of the verb, as well as of * Taken from Herbert Spencer's Essay on the Philosophy of Style (Essays, p. 228). |
