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ENGLISH

BY

H. A. TREBLE, M.A........ FORNA

AND

G. H. VALLINS, B.A.

BOOK III

THE ESSENTIALS OF

FORMAL COMPOSITION

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

1927

Printed in England

At the OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

By John Johnson

Printer to the University

NOTE

THE English of the third year is in the main transitional. Following the elementary work on the fundamental difficulties of language and composition, it becomes a period of preparation for the more advanced study of the fourth year. In this book, therefore, formal grammar has no place, and the treatment of the Essay is rather an anticipation of the future than a consummation of the past. It may be said, perhaps, that while the first two Parts are concerned with the principles of law and logic in language Part III adventures a little into the freedom of the creative; not, indeed, without the law, but with that liberty which is born of it. An attempt is made in these pages at once to stimulate the imagination and to curb its licence by a rigorous discipline of the mind in thought and expression. Paraphrase, précis writing, and simple but definite study of vocabulary have been made to take their part in the encouragement of such discipline, and to help in guiding the controlled imagination that should mark the maturer composition of this year.

THE ESSAY: ITS CONSTRUCTION

Thought.

An essay is a piece of written English on some particular subject. The word essayer is already familiar to us in French; it means 'to try', 'to weigh up in the mind'. So an essay is a weighing-up of thought. It is never a matter of haphazard ideas expressed in the first words that happen to spring into the mind. First it is a matter of clear thinking, and then of putting thoughts in order, arranging them in the best way. From the beginning we must try to think of the essay as a whole; to build it up in our minds beforehand. Otherwise, however good our sentences may be (though it is unlikely they will be good if we are not careful of our thought), the whole essay will be loose and disconnected, a mere heap of bricks instead of a building. The first secret of essay writing, as of everything else worth doing, is thought-control. In the Norse legends, Hugi, who was really man's Thought, was the fastest of all runners. He is still, and needs strict control. That is our business and our difficulty before we put our essay into its final words.

The first step in such control is the realization of

The Importance of the Subject.

It is quite clear that the subject should be the source and foundation of all we write in the essay. In other words we should be certain of a centre on which to fix our thought. Now that truth is so obvious, that most of us are always on the verge of forgetting it. In Geometry we have to think clearly and continually of the hypothesis before we come to the proof of the proposition. It is foolish to try to prove a thing unless we know perfectly what we are given. So in

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