OF

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

CHAPTER I.

OF COMPOSITION, AND ITS DIVISIONS INTO GRAMMATICAL AND RHETORICAL.-DISTINCTION BETWEEN SYNTAX AND CONSTRUCTION. OF ACCENT AND EMPHASIS.

The objects of language, whether spoken or written, are threefold:

1. To communicate to others the impressions which the speaker has received;

2. To recal to the memory of others what they once knew; and,

3. To excite sensations in others through the medium of the imagination.

To produce either, or all, of these ends, by means of speech and gesture, is the business of the orator; to gain the same purpose, by an arrangement of characters that represent words and

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sentences, is the province of the writer. The speech is an ORATION, and the writing is a CoмPOSITION; and both are eloquent if they please the ear and satisfy the judgment of those to whom they are addressed. The distinction, however, between an Oration and a Composition is only occasional,—not universal. An unpremeditated harangue has seldom any of the advantages of literary labour; but the Orations of those Masters, who, in successive ages, have rivetted the attention and penetrated the hearts of their hearers, have all smelt of the lamp ever since the days of Demosthenes.

Composition may, with propriety, be divided into two parts: Grammatical and Rhetorical. The former treats of the arrangement of the materials; the latter of the materials themselves. The one teaches the art of mounting the skeleton, with pins and with wires; the other chuses the fairest forms from the valley, binds them with sinews and covers them with flesh, and, animating them with the breath of Genius, bids the dry bones live.

The Grammatical division of our work has been much more generally investigated than the Rhetorical. Something on the subject may be seen in every Grammar; and, unless when we hope to illustrate what has been left obscure, or

to bring forward what has been neglected, we are not much inclined to tread anew the wearisome path of our childhood. For the present, therefore, with the exception of a few casual remarks, the declensions and conjugations shall be allowed to remain, unaltered, as they are found in the initiatory Schools. Before, however, entering upon the ground which we mean to occupy, we must beg leave to differ so far from the ordinary Grammars, as to distinguish between Syntax and Construction.

SYNTAX (from the Greek syn, with, and taxis, arrangement) treats of the Orthography that certain words should assume with regard to each other. It belongs to Grammar, strictly so called, and is, in every particular language, that collection of Rules which fixes its grammatical inflexions. Thus:

'He came to see me, at my lodgings, yesterday morning; and I returned with him, to his house, in the evening.'

Here the words I, me and my all refer to the speaker; and he, him and his, to the person spoken of: varying as either acts, is acted upon, or is a possessor, in the sentence. Again:

'She loves you, but you do not love her.' 'He loved her once, but he loves her no longer.' In the former sentence, the verb, to love,

changes with the person; and, in the latter, with the time of the action.

To preserve the customary uniformity, in such relations, is the proper province of Syntax.

CONSTRUCTION (from the Latin construere, to pile up, or build,) is the placing of the words and phrases of a sentence in a certain order; and, hence, we speak, metaphorically, of the structure of a sentence, pronouncing it to be bad, or good, according as it is perplexed or explicit,―rugged or harmonious. For example, the following are two Constructions of the same phrases, and which present the same thoughts though not with equal elegance and precision:

Success and miscarriage are empty sounds, (for) I have protracted my work till most of those have sunk into the grave, whom I wished to please; having little to fear or to hope from censure or from praise, with frigid tranquillity, I therefore dismiss it.'

'I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds, I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or to hope from censure or from praise.'

Other arrangements of these phrases might be formed, or even the phrases themselves might be

inverted; and he is the best Composer who is able to chuse the most luminous and most harmonious of the several Constructions. Strictly speaking, there is, probably, a shade of distinction in meaning, more or less obvious, between every two Constructions of the same sentence; but the investigation of this subject would here be premature: for we are now giving definitions— not examples.

HARMONY of Construction may be understood. in two different senses: One is the accordance of the several members of the sentence and may be compared to symmetry in Architecture. The other is the pleasing succession of accents and emphases, and would, perhaps, be more accurately denominated by the term Melody: it forms the beauty and elegance of Prose; and, when the order of succession is preserved with measured regularity, it constitutes the essence of verse. POETRY is not, exclusively, allied to either. It consists in embodying the forms of things unknown, and in giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.

PROSE, (Latin prosa) is from prorsus, straight forward, in contradistinction to VERSE (Latin versus) from vertere, to turn; because, in the one case, the reader goes on to the end of the paragraph, whereas, in the other, he must turn back