50. Molière's plot and idea is often taken from other writers, which he does not attempt to deny.

51. She said that she had lain the book on the table.

52. He would allow no one to open their eyes while at prayers, and would ofttimes raise up and look around him to see if all were praying.

53. Can I have the key to your room. Or will I ask the janitor for it?

54. If he hadn't given me a ride, I never would have been there in time.

55. If it don't come before five, I shall have to go for it myself.

56. It is just as good, if not better, than any other brand in the market.

57. I have no doubt but what he meant to have told you so long ago.

58. Every intelligent student ought to use their influence in behalf of such a scheme.

59. The old method is quite different in character than that now in use.

60. He knew, as even a boy younger than him would have known, that he was only admitted on certain conditions.

61. We are very careful who we let in the club, for we want to keep it very select.

62. Language of that sort, profane and illiterate, and which I am ashamed to repeat, could have been used only by a member of a very low strata of society.

63. The then monarchies are strongly in contrast with the now governments, democratic or otherwise.

64. A more startling phenomena than this upturned strata has never been observed in geology's whole history.

65. Much as I had hoped to have seen him he don't seem to in the least regret missing me.

66. Neither his father nor he were willing to have anything to do with a man who treated them so shamefully.

67. I only said I wouldn't go without he promised to pay all my expenses for the entire trip.

68. The rain came down and continued during the time the cyclists had their competition, clearing off about halfpast twelve, and continuing fine the remainder of the day.

69. I neither attempted to conceal from myself nor from him that the enterprise would be a dangerous one.

II. 1. Does the history of the word Solecism throw light on its meaning?

2. Comment on the following passage:

"Take another phrase, which few of us fail to utter every week: it is me. Now, clearly, the word after the verb is should be grammatically in agreement with the subject of the verb. Clearly, too, the subject of the verb is nominative; and apparently the form me, one of the very few inflections which remain in English, is not nominative, but objective. No question could occur with a noun: it is John, it is the man, for example, would be unchanged in form if English usage should choose to demand an objective instead of a nominative case after the verb. Clearly, too, it is him is wrong; and it is her. But how about it is me and it is I? Everybody knows that the latter form is logically the true one; most of us have been reproved over and over again for our depraved persistency in the use of the former. But, as a matter of fact, has not good use gone a long way to make it is me idiomatic, and it is I a bit pedantic? I do not feel at all sure that we can answer No."-Wendell: "English Composition," pp. 79, 80.

CHAPTER VII.

SENTENCES: LONG AND SHORT, PERIODIC AND LOOSE, BALANCED.

A

We now come to a point where we must to some extent change our method. In matters of grammar or idiom the question is usually one of right or wrong, of correct or incorrect use. By the laws of good use, for instance, it is correct to say, "You were"; it is incorrect to say "You was." But now we come to questions of taste or judgment. A long sentence is not wrong nor a short sentence right. periodic or a loose sentence is not necessarily correct or incorrect. The question is, Which is the best adapted for our purposes in general or in a given case, the long sentence or the short sentence, the periodic sentence or the loose sentence? Our duty is, then, to examine such questions of taste or judgment, to see the advantages on one side and the advantages on the other, and then to decide for ourselves.

I. THE LONG SENTENCE.

Advantage. The advantage of the long sentence is that by it we are able to state in the same breath, as it were, or at least in the same grammatical unit,

a whole thought with all its necessary modifications. The following passage from Matthew Arnold's Lecture on Numbers, for example, would have distinctly lost in force had it been broken up into shorter

sentences:

"And the philosophers and the prophets, whom I at any rate am disposed to believe, and who say that moral causes govern the standing and the falling of States, will tell us that the failure to mind whatsoever things are elevated must impair with an inexorable fatality the life of a nation, just as the failure to mind whatsoever things are just, or whatsoever things are amiable, or whatsoever things are pure, will impair it; and that if the failure to mind whatsoever things are elevated should be real in your American democracy, and should grow into a disease, and take firm hold on you, then the life of even these great United States must inevitably suffer and be impaired more and more, until it perish."

Disadvantage.

Unless, however, one's hand is skilful, the long sentence is often fatal to clearness. The following passage, for instance, is much more comprehensible in its second, than in its first, form.

(a) "Finally, Mill, the youngest of the three, he was but twenty-nine when he wrote the passage which I have quoted, had for several years been writing in the 'Westminster' and other reviews articles from which it was to be inferred that when his courageous and truth-loving father, and that father's friend, Bentham, should be gone from the earth they would leave behind them, in this heir of their hopes, one fit to be an expositor of their ideas through another generation, but who was likely rather to look right and left in that generation for himself and to

honor his descent, not by mere adhesion to what he had inherited, but by an open-mindedness that should even solicit contrary impressions and push on passionately at every break of day in the quest of richer truth."

(b) "Mill, the youngest of the group, though but twentynine when he wrote the passage quoted above, had for several years been known as a leading writer in the 'Westminster' and other reviews. From the tone and quality of his articles, it might already have been predicted that the ideas of his father, and of Bentham, his father's friend, were likely to be expounded to the next generation in a manner worthy of the bold thinkers who had put them forth. His readers felt that J. S. Mill was sure to honor his descent by no blind adhesion to inherited belief, but by a keen regard to the circumstances of his time, mind ever open to receive various impressions, and a zeal ever on the alert for the pursuit of truth."

a

Sum. In general, then, the long sentence should be used, especially by young writers, with great moderation. Often unnecessarily complicated, it overstrains the attention of the reader, who at the end of the sentence can sometimes scarcely remember what the beginning was.1

II. THE SHORT SENTENCE.

Advantage. The advantage of the short sentence. is that it gives to the style simplicity, directness, and rapidity. This is well illustrated in President Lin

1 The general tendency in English writers for the last two centuries has been towards the short, rather than the long, sentence. See the interesting chapter on sentence-length in Professor Sherman's "Analytics of Literature." A similar though much belated process is now taking place in German style.