the predicate before the subject, - predicative matter, that is, before the person or thing of which it is descriptive.

EXAMPLES. -1. Sentence with the subject put last. "On whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us is his wonderful invention." Here the order is, first, the adverbial element, second, the predicate, finally the subject, "his wonderful invention."

2. Sentence suspended in idea rather than in structure. "Spenser's manner is no more Homeric than is the manner of the one modern imitator of Spenser's beautiful gift, — the poet, who evidently caught from Spenser his sweet and easy-slipping movement, and who has exquisitely employed it; a Spenserian genius, nay, a genius by natural endowment richer probably than even Spenser; that light which shines so unexpected and without fellow in our century; an Elizabethan born too late, the early lost and admirably gifted Keats."1

3. A suspensive paragraph. "Was there then any man, by land or sea, who might serve as the poet's type of the ideal hero? To an Englishman, at least, this question carries its own reply. For by a singular destiny England, with a thousand years of noble history behind her, has chosen for her best beloved, for her national hero, not an Arminius from the age of legend, not a Henri Quatre from the age of chivalry, but a man whom men still living have seen and known. For, indeed, England and all the world as to this man were of one accord; and when in victory, on his ship Victory, Nelson passed away, the thrill which shook mankind was of a nature such as perhaps was never felt at any other death so unanimous was the feeling of friends and foes that earth had lost her crowning example of impassioned self-devotedness and of heroic honor." 2

Cautions and Regulatives. - While the suspensive structure is useful for concentrating attention on focal points of significance, and for imparting finish and unity to the diction, it imposes upon the reader a greater burden of interpretation than do other structures. It is against this difficulty that regulatives are for the most part directed.

16. The principal caution is against accumulating an excessive number of suspensive details. As these have to be held in mind, a kind of dead weight, until the apodosis

1 ARNOLD, On Translating Homer, p. 203.

2 MYERS, Wordsworth, p. 79.

or key-statement is reached, it is easy to make the load too great to be carried.1

When, as will sometimes occur, it seems best to introduce a long suspended structure, careful writers have much recourse to two ways of relieving the burden of details: first, they use the structure only with material that the previous discussion has made familiar, as, for instance, by way of recapitulation; and secondly, they take care that the last detail of the series shall in a sense summarize the rest, so that if only that is retained yet the significance of the series shall not be lost.

EXAMPLES. -1. Of recapitulation. In the following suspended sentence, from Cardinal Newman, the if-clauses are virtually a recapitulation of the whole lecture which this sentence concludes: "If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any that can be named,—if the origin of language is by many philosophers even considered to be nothing short of divine, -if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to

1 "Those who are not accustomed to watch the effects of composition upon the feelings, or have had little experience in voluminous reading pursued for weeks, would scarcely imagine how much of downright physical exhaustion is produced by what is technically called the periodic style of writing: it is not the length, the ȧπeраνтoλoyla, the paralytic flux of words: it is not even the cumbrous involution of parts within parts, separately considered, that bears so heavily upon the attention. It is the suspense, the holding-on, of the mind until what is called the abdoσis or coming round of the sentence commences; this it is which wears out the faculty of attention. A sentence, for example, begins with a series of ifs; perhaps a dozen lines are occupied with expanding the conditions under which something is affirmed or denied: here you cannot dismiss and have done with the ideas as you go along; all is hypothetic; all is suspended in air. The conditions are not fully to be understood until you are acquainted with the dependency; you must give a separate attention to each clause of this complex hypothesis, and yet having done that by a painful effort, you have done nothing at all; for you must exercise a reacting attention through the corresponding latter section, in order to follow out its relations to all parts of the hypothesis which sustained it. In fact, under the rude yet also artificial character of newspaper style, each separate monster period is a vast arch, which, not receiving its key-stone, not being locked into self-supporting cohesion, until you nearly reach its close, imposes of necessity upon the unhappy reader all the onus of its ponderous weight through the main process of its construction. The continued repetition of so Atlantean an effort soon overwhelms the patience of any reader, and establishes at length that habitual feeling which causes him to shrink from the speculations of journalists, or (which is more likely) to adopt a worse habit than absolute neglect, which we shall notice immediately." DE QUINCEY, Essay on Style, Works, Vol. iv, p. 204.

light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated, — if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,- if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family, — it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life, - who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence." 1

2. Of a summarizing if-clause. “If I have had my share in any measure giving quiet to private property, and private conscience; if, by my vote, I have aided in securing to families the best possession, peace; if I have joined in reconciling kings to their subjects, and subjects to their prince; if I have assisted to loosen the foreign holdings of the citizen, and taught him to look for his protection to the laws of his country, and for his comfort to the good-will of his countrymen; if I have thus taken my part with the best of men in the best of their actions, I can shut the book: I might wish to read a page or two more; but this is enough for my measure. I have not lived in vain." 2 Here the kind of summary given by the italicized if-clause is a summary of the significance needed to give impressiveness to what comes after.

This second example, it will be noted, is recapitulatory; and the first example contains like this a summarizing if-clause, the summary pointed out by the phrase "in a word."

17. It is often an advantage, when the suspensive details will bear separation, to introduce the apodosis not all at once, but piecemeal, each portion serving as a pointer toward the solution.

EXAMPLES. The following sentence is a stock example in rhetorical treatises: "At last, with no small difficulty, after much fatigue, through deep roads, and bad weather, we came to our journey's end." Here the large accumulation of adverbial elements at the beginning makes a somewhat ponderous period. The following modification of its order has been

1 NEWMAN, Idea of a University, p. 293.

2 BURKE, Speech to the Electors of Bristol (Select British Eloquence, p. 310).

suggested: "At last, with no small difficulty, and after much fatigue, we came, through deep roads and bad weather, to our journey's end." This certainly makes a more easily moving sentence.1 In the following sentence Carlyle employs this device, not so much to improve the period as to be Carlylean: "They offer him stipends and emoluments to a handsome extent; all which stipends and emoluments he, covetous of far other blessedness than mere money, does, in his chivalrous way, without scruple, refuse." 2

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18. A balance should be observed between the protasis and the apodosis of a suspended structure; that is, when the solution has been delayed it should have bulk and importance enough to pay for the wait. It is thus a kind of cadence, alike in thought and in movement. Particular caution should be taken of clauses beginning with which or not; when added to a period they are liable to introduce some thought not reconcilable with the unity of the sentence. The "loose addition" such an appendage to the period is technically called.

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EXAMPLES. - In the following, the accumulation of details seems an increasing promise of a great ending, and then the brevity of the latter gives the effect of much labor for insignificant result: "Shocked by the suicide and treachery of a professed friend, embarrassed by the broken condition of the bank, maddened by the wild clamor of an excited community, stung by the harsh reports of the New York papers, dreading lest by reason of some technicality his honor would be impeached, having borne the terrible strain for four weary days, in a moment, without the slightest premeditation, frenzied and insane, he committed the deed."

The examples from Cardinal Newman and Burke, under ¶ 16, both give good instances of the loose addition; the sentences are not left with the abrupt ending of the mere apodosis, but carried on to a balancing fulness and explanation.

The evil of the negative or relative loose addition is exemplified in the following sentences: "This reform has already been highly beneficial to

1 See discussion of this sentence, and principle involved, SPENCER, Philosophy of Style, pp. 26, 27. Also BAIN, Rhetoric (old edition), p. 77.

2 CARLYLE, French Revolution, Vol. i, Book vii, Chap. i.

3 For the claim of cadence, as related to rhythm, see above, p. 219.

4 For the requirements of sentence-unity, see below, p. 320 sqq.

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all classes of our countrymen, and will, I am persuaded, encourage among us industry, self-dependence, and frugality, and not, as some say, wastefulness. This addition ought to have been put, by way of suspense, after the words "among us."—" After a long and tedious journey, the last part of which was a little dangerous owing to the state of the roads, we arrived safely at York, which is a fine old town." Here the subject-matter of the which-clause really belongs to a new sentence.

V. AMPLITUDE.

On the principle that everything should have bulk and prominence according to its importance, it is a sound and natural impulse, sometimes, to put thought in such fulness and copiousness of statement as to make the reader delay upon it and pay detailed attention to its successive stages. The forms and applications of this impulse are here gathered under the name Amplitude.

NOTE. — One of the specious pleas of superficial advisers in composition is that every statement should be put in the briefest and most pointed shape. This plea is good for its fitting object and effect; but the other side, too, has a claim. For some purposes not parsimony but studied abundance of words is more requisite; this not from the effort to dilute the thought and fill space but to set forth fairly its deeply felt wealth of meaning. Such free range of utterance is one of the primal aims of literary expression; see above, p. 14. The antithesis to it, Condensation, will be duly presented; see below, p. 295.

Self-Justifying Forms of Amplitude. Not all forms of amplitude are reducible to grammatical laws; beyond such laws, indeed beyond the reach of rules, the impulse to amplitude reveals a kind of labored deliberateness, reveals also a certain exuberance of personal enthusiasm, which makes the wealth of expression not a superfluity but an overflow, and without which all mere devices are barren.2

1 Taken from ABBOTT, How to Write Clearly.

2 "And since the thoughts and reasonings of an author have, as I have said, a personal character, no wonder that his style is not only the image of his subject, but of his mind. That pomp of language, that full and tuneful diction, that felicitous