TIME was when what is called Rhetoric was the subject of much earnest and profound study. Rhetoric, to use a definition of our own, is “Composition as a fine art." It was the study not so much of what to say, as how to say it; and from Aristotle and Cicero to Blair and Whately, we have treatises on this subject, with elaborate rules in regard to the construction of sentences, and use of figures of speech, the observance of which could not fail to make an orator of anybody. Yet, after all, orators are, like poets, not made but born, and there is much truth in the lines that

"All a rhetorician's rules But teach him how to name his tools."

It would not be far from the truth to say that art employed in composition is akin to artifice and affectation. The ability to work up a climax reminds one of the expression"doing" the pathetic; or the plan adopted by the orator who interlarded his MS. with parenthetical remarks for his own guidance in reading, such as "weep here." "weep here." Elocutionists have, or had rather, their own rules about the very delivery of an address. The arms were to be held aloft here, and stuck akimbo there. The absurdity of this has manifested itself plainly enough now, and it is unnecessary to make further remark on this head. Suffice it to say that while repudiating the numerous rules of the rhetorician, we do not mean to speak

contemptuously of what may be properly enough termed a cultivated style. But we object to the study of composition as an art, and think that the practice of the application of the many rules laid down for this study is a waste of time and labour. Logicians are apt to suppose that nobody can argue unless they know logic, or the laws of argument. So is it with men who have given themselves up to the art of composition; they are apt to suppose that the art is the all-in-all; that unless the writer or speaker is able to put down his words in a certain regular form, the attempt to convince or persuade is useless.

A certain class of philosophers hold that all our ideas and all our knowledge are the result of experience. We have some sympathy with this philosophy. We have sweet sounds first, then we have the theory of music and harmony; we have natural common sense, then come logic and metaphysics; we know by experience the difference in the size and weight of bodies, then follow natural philosophy and mechanics; we discover that it is good to sell at a higher price than that at which we have bought, then we are told about political economy; we wish to say or write something, and when we do so we are informed of the inexorable laws of English composition, and the rules of the rhetoricians. Yet with all this, logic and metaphysics, natural philosophy and political economy, or even the

rules of rhetoric, are properly enough the study of mankind; only it is well to remember that we may be logical or metaphysical, true to fact in philosophy or political economy, and perfectly natural or effective in our writings and utterances without a perfect knowledge of the laws which regulate these respective arts and sciences.

The workman knows that it is a much more easy thing for him to strike his pick downwards than to hit up, yet he may know nothing of the law of gravitation. The woodman is not aware that the planet helps him to split his stick; a man with a musical ear will detect a discord although he should know nothing about the chromatic or diatonic scales; a shopkeeper knows how to attend to his own interest without an education in political economy-so is it with all of us in the matter of writing or speaking. If we have anything very particular to say, we will manage to express it well enough, even although we know very little about the proper form in which it should be put.

The great objection to the study of writing as an art, is to be found in the fact that the teachers of rhetoric, from Cicero downwards, seem to consider the arrangement of words everything; they treat of the graces of language, while they forget that the language is altogether a secondary matter; words are for the expression of ideas; they serve no other purpose, and to forget that fact in the building of any system is fatal to its success.

Rhetoric, so called, is not popular now-a-days. Professors pooh-pooh Blair, as political economists profess to disregard Adam Smith. In our own time the chair of rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh has been transformed into that of

English literature. What's in a name? The same subject of study remains. The elaborate rules of

which we have spoken have been laid upon the shelf, and imitation of good writers is the thing now recommended. If you want to acquire a good style of composition, spend your days and nights with Addison or some good writer-that is the present position, and it is certainly a better one than that of following the minute rules of the rhetoricians. Still imitation is not a good thing to advise; it is never a success. The imitator very often more carefully and faithfully copies the blemishes than the meritorious parts of the writer whom he admires. The way we should like to see the recommendation put is this-read the best writers carefully and often, and by so doing, unconsciously as it were, you will become able to write as they do.

Perhaps the reader will suppose that in this introduction we have erected a man of straw, in order to have the pleasure of knocking him down. Why, it may be said,. speak of rhetoric when it is only to decry the art; why treat of English composition, when it is only to exhibit for disapproval the plans which have been recommended for its study? We have only been clearing the way for our own position, and having done this we will not further trouble him with strictures on methods of which we disapprove.

Cogito, ergo sum, says the philosopher. Has anybody said "I think, therefore I speak?" that is the meaning of speech. So important is thought to speech, that we hear children told to think twice before they speak. Many older people would be none the worse of the same advice. Some philosophers hold that without a knowledge of words, thought itself would be impossible. Whately says many if questioned on the subject would answer that the use of language is to communicate

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thoughts to each other, and that it is peculiar to man; the truth being that that use of language is not peculiar to man, though enjoyed by him in a much higher degree than by the brutes; while that which does distinguish man from brute, is another and quite distinct use of language, viz., as an instrument of thought,-a system of general signs without which the reasoning process could not be conducted.'

If this then is true, how important is it that our knowledge of words should be great and accurate! We will think better, we will speak better, we will write better, the more fully we can master at least one language. This is a thing impossible to no one.

What

a glorious subject is this for a student who will take it up! Our own Queen's English, like the Queen's highway, is free to all. The very words with which Milton and Shakspeare wrought such wonders, are ours if we can only use them. Dean Alford eloquently says of this highway of the Queen's English

in our days it has become a level, firm, broad highway, over which all thought and all speech can travel evenly and safely. Along it the lawyer and the parliamentary agent propel their heavy wagons; the poet and the novelist drive their airy tandems; on the same road divines, licensed and unlicensed, ply once a week or more, with omnibus or carrier's cart, promising to carry their passengers into another land. And there plods ever the great busy crowd of foot passengers-the talkers of the market, of society, and of the family. Words, words, words, good and bad, loud and soft, long and short; millions in the hour, innumerable in the day, unimaginable in the year; what then in the life? what in the history of a nation? what in that of the world? and not

one of them is ever forgotten; there is a book where they are all set down."

It is a common enough thing to vapour about the excellence of silence. "Silence is golden." "Gabble and Babble are but empty fools." "Feelings are too deep for utterance." That silence is golden is but half a truth. It is certainly a wise thing for a fool to be silent; but speech is golden when wisdom crieth aloud in the streets.

True, in many circumstances, words are totally inadequate to express what we feel; still, if we cannot say all we wish, we ought to be able to say as much as is possible. It would not be incorrect often to suppose that the paucity of language is a pretty fair gauge of what is to be said; and it may almost be accepted as an axiom, "When the expression is hazy, so is the thought." Everybody we are sure will agree with us in this, that whatever the limits of our acquaintance with language may be, if we have anything truly important to say, we will manage to express ourselves in a way which will be understood. Still there is no reason why our acquaintance with the language which we can all read and write and speak, should be so limited as in many cases it is.

English grammar, the first thing necessary, is not a difficult thing to learn; and after that, a wholesome course of reading is the only thing we would recommend for those who wish to acquire a fair style of composition. Learn the use of words; let the reader never pass one he does not fully understand; turn up the dictionary-and surely good ones are cheap enoughfor any word the meaning of which may seem doubtful; and the value of this course will appear in due time. The reader will become pos

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sessed of a well of English undefiled; a vocabulary of terms which will help him through many difficulties, whereby he will be able to express himself on any subject on which he may desire to speak. We will not recommend any books on composition, although there are many modern ones; we would just reiterate the remark-read much; become acquainted with words, and their use, and application. We dismiss all the so-called universal rules, and endorse the Dean of Canterbury's advice, when he says, "the less you know of them, the less you turn your words right or left to observe them, the better. Write good manly English; explain what you mean as sensible men cannot fail to understand it; and then if the rules be good, you will be sure to have complied with them; and if they be bad, your writing will be a protest against them."

Many people in this country labour under the disadvantage of speaking and thinking in one language, and reading and writing in another-Gaelic, Irish, and Welsh people do this - while the great mass of the population in Scotland speak Scotch and read or write English. In this paper we will not be able to say anything about our grand old Scottish tongue which we know and love so well.

But we

say just this one word for it, that it is an advantage rather than a disadvantage to know both Scotch and English. We have words in the one for which we can find no synonyms in the other. English is a mongrel enough language as it is, but it would be much enriched by the adoption of a few good words from our ancient Doric.

The number of amusing and ridiculous stories which can be told in regard to the use, or misuse rather, of words is great; and as there is no more convincing argu

ment than the reductio ad absurdum, we will see what can be done for our subject by this method. In composition we have sins of omission and commission; people write words they should not write, and leave unwritten the words which they ought to have used. The following are one or two of the more common errors made in the choice of words:

First, more words are used than are necessary.

Second, a long word is taken when a short one would be far better.

Third, words are used in wrong meanings.

Fourth, pronouns are used so indiscriminately that we never know who's who.

We will illustrate these several errors in their order. First we have instances of the use of too many, or too long words, and we could give many examples of this. We have pompous inflated speakers, who use high-sounding words, and plenty of them. Of this class was the man who drove up to the inn door and, instead of telling the stable-boy to unyoke his horse, said: "Extricate my quadruped from the vehicle."

What is called the Latinized style of composition was fashionable during one period of our history. Sir Thomas Browne in the seventeenth, and Dr. Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century, managed this heavy style with considerable success; but their host of imitators brought utter ridicule on this form of expression. It is said of Dr. Johnson that, instead of asking for a snuff in so many words, he said: "Allow me to insert the summits of my digits into your pulveriferous utensil, in order that I may thereby create a grateful titillation in my olfactory nerves."

A poor woman listening one day to her clergyman-whose style was

of the Johnsonian order-heard him use the word "periphrasis." She did not know what it meant, and being rather alarmed at the sound, she waited upon the preacher and asked him to explain himself. "My good woman," said he, "a periphrasis is simply a certain circumlocutory and pleonastic style of oratorical sonorosity, circumscribing an atom of ideality in a verbal profundity."

The inclination to use long words, and lots of them, is the practice very often of men who are imperfectly educated. Working men, for instance, who have read a little more than their fellows, show off their greater knowledge by the use of words they themselves imperfectly understand. They air a few jawbreakers, if one might be allowed to use such an expression, to the confusion and wondering admiration of their ignorant hearers. We know a man of this class who never "agrees" with you, but he "homologates your opinions;" all men with him are "individuals." Your "wife" is the "partner of your joys and sorrows;" a "baby" is a "little pledge of affection;" in fact a spade with him is not a spade, but an "agricultural implement!"

An old gentleman acquaintance of our own, has the following story as an illustration of the same thing. At one time he was a teacher in the south of Scotland. The minister one day entered the school when a class happened to be reading the thirty-second chapter of Genesis,containing the account of the meeting of Esau and Jacob. The minister began to examine the class. "What," said he, "was there in the circumstances of Esau that was calculated to awaken apprehension in the mind of Jacob ?" No answer. The question was repeated in terms slightly varied; but still no reply. At last our friend the teacher requested permission to ask the ques

tion himself, and he did so in the following words :-"The minister wishes to know what made Jacob afraid of Esau." Immediately the whole class replied, "He had 400 men with him."

Pistol, in Henry V., is a fine illustration of the loud and bumptious speaker. We would just refer to the scene where he eats the leek, for a lesson in boastful and inflated talk.

These are a few illustrations of the use of two or three words where one would have been enough. The use of short, clear and simple words recommends itself to the common sense of most; only the pedantic and the ignorant, those who have no clear thought to express, raise a blinding dust of unintelligible terms; and it may not be far wrong to suppose that the person who does not make himself clearly understood is not worth trying to understand. We have given illustrations of the absurd use of long words; now for just a line or two about the short ones. "The sweet face of heaven" is a better expression than 66 the azure firmament of Imperial Jove;" it is better to say "the stars of God" than "the constellations of the Deity." Nathan points his moral with "Thou art the man!" The blushing bride at the altar says "I will."

Many of the pithiest and most beautiful passages in our literature are composed nearly of monosyllables. The best writing might, as a rule, be read by a child. In the fine old Scottish version of the 100th Psalm, there is not a word of more than two syllables, and scarcely a dozen of these. Many of the most beautiful passages in Shakspeare might be read by little ones not out of the a-b-ab class. Take this, for instance: