QUESTIONS.

1. To what kind of composition does this passage belong?

2. For what purpose is (6) introduced?

3. What peculiarity is there in the second and third clauses of (10),— "which regions?" Are they naturally introduced?

4. Are the sentences generally periodic or loose? What, in this respect, is the prominent character of the style?

5. Do Classical or Saxon words predominate?

6. Note instances of circumlocution, or of thoughts unnecessarily elaborated.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Exercise 6.

BURKE. (1730-1797.)

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move inglittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a (6) look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."

(9)

(10)

QUESTIONS.

1. What sentence marks the transition from admiration to sarcasm? 2. What figures are employed in (1) and (2)? Are they consistent or congruous?

3. What figure of construction have we in (3)?

4. What figure is used in (5)?

5. What expression in (9) is inconsistent with the lofty sentiment of the passage?

6. What expression in (10) is epigrammatic?

A. (1)

(2)

Exercise 7.

JUNIUS. (? FRANCIS, 1740-1818.)

"My Lord,-You are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the public, that if, in the following lines, a compliment or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your established character, and, perhaps, an insult to your understanding. You have nice feelings, my lord, if we may judge from your resentments; cautious, therefore, of giving offence, when you have so little deserved it, I shall leave the illustration of your virtues to other hands. Your friends have a privilege to play upon the easiness of your temper, or possibly they are better acquainted with your (4) (5) good qualities than I am. You have done good by stealth. The (6) rest is upon record. You have still left ample room for speculation, when panegyric is exhausted.

(3)

B. (7) (8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

"You are indeed a very considerable man. The highest rank; a splendid fortune; and a name glorious till it was yours, were sufficient to have supported you with meaner abilities than I think you possess. From the first, you derived a constitutional name to respect; from the second, a natural extensive authority;-the last created a partial expectation of hereditary virtues. The use you have made of these uncommon advantages might have been more honourable to yourself, but could not be more instructive to mankind. We may trace it in the veneration of your country, the choice of your friends, and in the accomplishment of every sanguine hope which the public might have conceived from the illustrious name of Russell."

QUESTIONS.

1. What is the prevailing tone of this passage? Note particular instances of the figure referred to.

2. What expression in (3) is objectionable?

3. What words are in (6) equivocal?

4. What expression in (9) disturbs the unity of the tone of the sentence? What is the effect of this?

5. Wherein lies the antithesis between (5) and (6)?

6. Out of which sentence in A., does paragraph B. spring?

7. Note the connexion between the successive sentences in B.

Exercise 8.

LAMB. (1775–1834.)

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art everything! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity-then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion! or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

"What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning! Why is it we can never hear mention of them without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping!

"Above all thy varieties, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves

"What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard."

QUESTIONS.

1. Of what figure of language are A. and B. examples?

2. Point out the epigram in this paragraph.

3. Remark on the use of the words "jejune" in (2), "revert" in (3), "arride" in (8), and "sciential,” in (13).

4. Point out the example of mixed metaphors in D.

5. What epithet would best describe the character of Lamb's style?

(1)

Exercise 9.

JEFFREY. (1773-1850.)

"The Restoration introduced a French court,-under circumstances more favourable for the effectual exercise of court influence than ever before existed in England: but this of itself would not have been sufficient to account for the sudden change

(2)

-(3)

(4)

in our literature which ensued. It was seconded by causes of far more general operation. The Restoration was undoubtedly a popular act; and, indefensible as the conduct of the army and the civil leaders was on that occasion, there can be no question that the severities of Cromwell, and the extravagances of the sectaries, had made republican professions hateful, and religious ardour ridiculous, in the eyes of a great proportion of the people. All the eminent writers of the preceding period, however, had inclined to the party that was now overthrown; and their writings had not only been accommodated to the character of the government under which they were produced, but were deeply imbued with its obnoxious principles, which were those of their (5) respective authors. When the restraints of authority were taken off, therefore, and it became profitable, as well as popular, to discredit the fallen party, it was natural that the leading authors should affect a style of levity and derision, as most opposite to that of their opponents, and best calculated for the purposes they had in view. The nation, too, was now for the first time essentially divided in point of character and principle, and a much greater proportion were capable both of writing in support of their (7) notions, and of being influenced by what was written. Add to all this, that there were real and serious defects in the style and manner of the former generation; and that the grace, and brevity, and vivacity of that gayer manner which was now introduced from France, were not only good and captivating in themselves, but had then all the charms of novelty and of contrast; and it will not be difficult to understand how it came to supplant that which had been established of old in the country, and that so suddenly, that the same generation, among whom Milton had been formed to the severe sanctity of wisdom and the noble independence of genius, lavished its loudest applauses on the obscenity and servility of such writers as Rochester and Wycherley."

(6)

QUESTIONS.

1. What is the relation between (1) and (2); and between (2) and those that follow it?

2. Note the connecting particles between (3) and (4), and the subsequent sentences.

3. Why is the last clause of (4) objectionable?

4. Point out the redundancy and feebleness in (5).

5. Wherein is the paragraph wanting in variety?

6. What clause in (7) is obscure?

7. What words in (7) form an unmelodious combination? 8. What is the general character of the style?

D

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Exercise 10.

HALLAM. (1778-1859.)

"It has been justly observed by a living writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius, whose eloquence is as the rush of mighty waters, and has left it for others almost as invidious to praise in terms of less rapture, as to censure what he has borne along in the stream of unhesitating eulogy, that "no poet has ever had a more exquisite sense of the beautiful than Spenser." In Virgil and Tasso this was not less powerful; but even they, even the latter himself, do not hang with such a tenderness of delight, with such a forgetful delay, over the fair creations of their fancy. Spenser is not averse to images that jar on the mind by exciting horror or disgust, and sometimes his touches are rather too strong; but it is on love and beauty, on holiness and virtue, that he reposes with all the sympathy of his soul. The slowly sliding motion of his stanza, "with many a bout of linked sweetness long drawn out," beautifully corresponds to the dreamy enchantment of his description, when Una, or Belphœbe, or Florimel, or Amoret, is present to his mind. In this varied delineation of female perfectness, no earlier poet had equalled him; nor, excepting Shakspeare, has he had, perhaps, any later rival.”

QUESTIONS.

1. Point out the dislocation in (1).

2. Note how the fault is redeemed by the grace of the expression. 3. What expressions in (2) and (3) strike you as being particularly appropriate?

4. Do any words in (4) make a disagreeable combination of sounds? 5. Note the judicial caution of the opinion expressed in (5).

6. What is the general character of the style?

7. Remark on the continuity of the paragraph.

Exercise 11.

MACAULAY. (1800-1859.)

"When Sunday the fourth of November dawned, the cliffs of the Isle of Wight were full in view of the Dutch armament. That day was the anniversary both of William's birth and of his marriage. Sail was slackened during part of the morning; and divine service was performed on board of the ships. In the afternoon and through the night the fleet held on its course. Torbay was the place where the Prince intended to land. But the morning of Monday the fifth of November was hazy.