idea to another, they are the foundation of all reasoning.

Q. What language most abounds in them? A. The Greek, in consequence of the acute and subtile genius of that refined people.

Q. Is the language at present spoken throughout Great Britain, the original speech of the Island ?

A. No; nor is it derived from it.

Q. What was the original language?
A. The Celtic or Gaelic.

Q. By whom was this expelled?

A. By the Saxons, who conquered the Britons and drove them into the mountains of Wales, A. D. 450.

Q. What was the Saxon language ?

A. A dialect of the Gothic or Teutonic.
Q. Was this the present English?

A. Not purely. William the Conqueror afterwards introduced the Norman or French, which became united with the Saxon, and formed the English Tongue.

Q. What has been the effect of this union? A. Irregular construction: imperfect declension; and narrow syntax.

Q. Is the English language copious?
A. Yes. Few languages are more so.
Q. For what is it most ditinguished?

A. For its strength and energy, and its adaptedness to the higher subjects of composition.

Q. In what does it excel the French?

A. In the language of poetry.

Q. In what does the French language surpass the English?

A. In expressing the nicer shades of chaIt is the happiest language for con

racter.

versation in the world.

Q. What effect does national character have upon language?

A. Great. The gaiety of the French and the gravity of the English are clearly visible in their respective Tongues.

Q. On what depends the flexibility of a language, or its power of accommodation to different styles and manners?

A. On its copiousness; the different arrangements of which its words are susceptible; and the variety and beauty of the sound of those words.

Q. What language possesses this quality in the highest degree?

A. The Greek.

Q. What is the flexibility of the English? A. Inferior to the Italian, but highly reputable.

Q. In what has it been thought most defective?

A. In harmony of sound.

Q. Is it so to an extreme?

A. No. Our verse is, after the Italian, the most diversified and harmonious of any of the modern dialects; it far exceeds the French verse in variety, sweetness, and melody.

Q. How does the English compare with the other European dialects?

34

Style, Perspicuity, and Precision.

A. It is, in its form and construction, the most simple of all; being free from all intricacy of cases, declensions, moods, and tenses. Q. Does it require a high degree of our study and attention?

A. Yes; or we can never write it with propriety, purity, and elegance.

STYLE, PERSPICUITY, AND PRECISION.

Q. What is Style?

A. The peculiar manner in which a man expresses his thoughts by language.

Q. Under what may the qualities of a good style be arranged?

A. Under Perspicuity and Ornament.

Q. What is the fundamental quality of a good style?

A. Perspicuity.

Q. What does Perspicuity, with respect to words and phrases, require?

A. Purity, Propriety, and Precision.
Q. What is Purity?

A. The use of such words and constructions as belong to the idiom of a particular language, in opposition to words and phrases that are imported from other languages, or that are obsolete or new coined.

Q. What is Propriety?

A. The selection of such words as the best

and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express. Q. What is Precision?

A. Retrenching all superfluities, and pruning the expression so as to exhibit neither more nor less than an exact copy of our idea. Q. What is a Loose Style?

A. One in which it is difficult to ascertain the precise meaning of the writer.

Q. What is the chief source of a Loose Style ?

A. The injudicious use of Synonymous words; such as Austerity and Rigour, Custom and Habit, Pride and Vanity, Only and Alone, Entire and Complete, With and By, which agree in expressing one principal idea, but always with some diversity in the circumstances.*

Q. To write or speak with precision, what is requisite ?

A. Clear and distinct ideas; and an exact

* Austerity relates to the manner of living; rigour, of punishing. Custom respects the action; habit, the actor. Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others. Only imports that there is no other of the same kind; alone imports being accompanied by no other; an only child is one who has neither brother nor sister; a child alone is one who is left by itself. A thing is entire by wanting none of its parts; complete, by wanting none of the appendages belonging to it. We kill a man with a sword; he dies by violence. The criminal is bound with ropes, by the executioner.

and full comprehension of the force of those words we employ.

STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES.

Q. What are the properties most essential to a perfect sentence?

A. Clearness; Unity; Strength; and Harmony.

QFrom what does Ambiguity, the opposite of Clearness, arise ?

A. Either from a wrong choice of words, or a wrong collocation of them.

Q. In the arrangement of sentences, what capital rule should be observed?

A. Place the words or members, most nearly related, as near to each other as possible; so as to make their mutual relation clearly appear.

Q. What attention should be paid to adverbs, and the relatives who, which, and what? A. Great; as, by their position, is often determined the meaning of a sentence.

Q. What is the first rule to be observed for preserving the unity of a sentence?

A Change the scene, during the course of the sentence, as little as possible. Hurry not, by sudden transitions, from person to person, nor from subject to subject.

Q. What is the second?