The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Key to Abbreviations and References
• Introduction
• 1.: The Manuscript
• 2.: The Lectures
• 3.: Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages
• 4.: Rhetoric and Literary Criticism
• 5.: System and Aesthetics
• Bibliographical Note
• Lectures On Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: Lecture 2D.
• Lecture 3D.: Of the Origin and Progress of Language 1
• Lecture 4tha
• Lecture 5. A
• Lecture 6.THA: Of What Is Called the Tropes and Figures of Speech. B
• Lecture. 7. A
• Lecture. 8. A
• Lecture. 9tha
• Lecture. 10tha
• Lecture. 11 a
• Lecture. 12.THA: Of Composition
• Lecture. 13 a
• | Lecture. 14 a
• Lecture 15tha
• Lecture. 16th. a
• Lecture XVII. A
• Lecture Xviii a
• Lecture. Xixth. a
• Lecture. XX.THA
• Lecture Xxist. a
• Lecture Xxiida
• Lecture Xxiiida
• Lecture Xxivtha
• Lecture XXV. A
• Lecture Xxvitha
• Lecture Xxvii a
• Lecture Xxviiitha
• Lecture Xxix a
• Lecture. Xxx a
• Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages,&c. &c.1
• Appendix 1 (see P. 32) the Bee, Or Literary Weekly Intelligencer, For Wednesday, May 11, 1791.
• Appendix 2 Table of Corresponding Passages

Lecture 5. ^a

Friday Nov.^r 26. 1762

It is a great defect in the arangement of a sentence when it has what they call a tail coming after it, that is when the sense appears to be concluded when it is not really so. This is always avoided by placing the terminative and circumstantiall term before the attributive. This by rendering the sense incomplete prevents our thinking it is concluded before the wh<ole> is expressed. It likewise keeps the mind in suspense, which is of great advantage on many occasions. If these rules be observed the expression, though not perhaps so pompous and regular as that of Lord Shaftesbury amongst the moderns or Isocrates and the other most antient orators, will probably have more force and life, and be every way more natural and Eloquent, than the laboured periods of those authors.

The chief thing they aimed at in the | v.49 arrangement of their words was the agreable cadence of the periods. This was much more easily attained in the ancient than modern languages. The similarity of sound in the different members, one great help in this case, was allways to be come ^b at without any great labour: Their verbs and nouns generally having the same or similar terminations in the same parts. By this means the cadence of their sentences were easily rendered smoothe and Uniform. But in modern languages the case is very different as neither the verbs nor nouns have such similarity in their terminations. The chief help in our language to a good cadence is to make the different members end nearly with the same number of words | v.50 and those of the same sort. When other ways are attempted or when even this is carried too <far>, it often hurts the propriety and perspicuity of the sentence, which are still more to be regarded.

| 50 {The ancient authors of the best character generally avoid this by throwing the verb and sometimes the nominative also into the end of the sentence. Livy and Cicero commonly <end> every third sentence in this manner. And later authors thinking to attain their grandeur and dignity by following them in this, frequently carry it too far, so as to end perhaps 2 out of 3 with the verb or nominative. Cicero was ridiculed 1 for his esse [Posse] videatur.} ^c

| 51 {There is a passage in the Oratio pro Marcello in which there is an example of Couplets and of Alternate Rhime. Another passage in Shaftesburys Essay on Virtue gives a specemen of his great care. 2 The passage is a description of a Judicious traveller.} ^d

| v.50 In many cases this uniform and regular cadence is not at all proper. Joy and grief generally burst out into periods, regularly decreasing or increasing both in length and the quickness of their movements according as the passion is growing more violent or beginning to subside. {The ^e Bursts of Laughter and of Crying observe this Regularity of increase or diminution.} ^f Pompous lofty expressions generally run into sentences of a tollerable length and of a slow movement. Cicero has many passages that shew the proper stile of grief and joy in this respect: he often makes use of those stronger passions. But De| v.51mosthenes, a man of a more hard ^g and stubborn materials, never introduces those passions and accordingly has none of those regular and uniform cadences. Lord Shaftesbury may serve as an example of the pompous and grand stile. {Demosthenes never expresses a weak Passion: Joy, grief, or Compassion never once, he is that hard unfeeling man; nor does he ever express Pomp as Cicero often does, he is altogether familiar tho Severe} ^h

On the other hand indignation has <no> ⁱ sort of regularity in its cadence and anger is of all the most broken and irregular. {Indignation everyone knows is the most irregular of all Passions in its movements. It is so in its Expression also, and this it is which gives the Variety to Demosthenes Periods.} ^j

A good and harmonious sound is also promoted by avoiding harsh clashings of consonants or the hiatus arising from the meeting <of> many vowels. The latter our language is in no great danger [is danger] of. The more frequently vowels and dipthongs occur it is generally the sweeter. Waller | v.52 has a vast sweetness in his compositions, from the smooth and melodious words he generally makes use of. | 53 {Waller has a whole Copy of verses to Delia 3 in which the only harsh words are Stretch and Gods.

• Delia let not us enquire
• what has been our past Desire
• for if Joys we now may prove
• take advice of present love.

Swift in his Severe Ironicall manner says 4

• Our Barren climate hardly bears
• one Sprig of bay in 50 years
• yet every fool his claim alledges
• as if it grew on common hedges.} ^k

Swift again is harsh and unpleasant in many of his compositions. This stile suits well enough with the morose humour of that author but would bee very unpleasant in most sorts of compositions.

Long sentences are generally inconvenient and no one will be apt to use them who has his thoughts in good order. This is not to say that we are to be so restricted as Demetrius Phalereus 5 and other authors would have us, as never to have above 3 or 4 members at most in a period. There are many sentences in Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury <which> have twice that number and | v.53a are nevertheless very perspicuous. ^l

| 52a {In the same manner as when we are taken with any Subject and full of it we are eager and impatient to speak of it and bring it in to every Conversation, so ^m whichsoever it is among the Ideas which constitute a Phrase that most deeply affects us, that we bring forth first.

As we are naturally disposed to begin with the most interesting Idea and end with those which are least so, in like manner those who are little attentive to their manner of speaking begin always in a high key | v.52a and end in a low one. This is the manner of all those who have a monotony, who whine whether in the Pulpit of the Barr or in Conversation.

When in obedience to the Arrangement of Ideas the objective comes first it requires the subjective to be placed immediately after.

• Whom have I hurt? No Poet yet or Peer. 6
• Him haply Slumbring on the Norway foam etc.

| 52b This then is the Rule.

Let that which affects us most be placed first, that which affects us in the next degree next, and so on to the end.

I will only give one other Rule with regard to the arrangement which is Subordinate indeed to this great one, and it is that your Sentence or Phrase never drag a Tail.

To limit and qualify what you are about to affirm before you give the affirmation has the appearance of accurate and extensive views, but to qualify it afterwards seems a kind of Retractation and | v.52b bears the appearance of confusion or of disingenuity.

Many other rules for arrangement have been given but they do not deserve attention.}

[a]MS 4; all subsequent lectures are correspondingly misnumbered

[b]MS become (? –squeezed at end of line)

[1 ]Quintilian (X.ii.18) says some orators think they have done brilliantly and spoken as Cicero would have done ‘si in clausula posuissent Esse videatur’.

[c]In Hand B keyed by marginal X to above line 1 of v.49

[2 ]Pro Marco Marcello: the reference is unclear, unless it is to such patterns as ‘imperatorum / gentium / populorum / regum’ (ii.5). Couplet rhymes are, as Latin terminations make inevitable, fairly frequent: ‘aut nobilitate aut probitate’ (i.3); ‘interclusam aperuisti . . . aliquod sustulisti’ (i.2); ‘[multi quid sibi expediret,] multi quid deceret, non nulli etiam quid liceret’ (x.30). For Shaftesbury JML suggested the passage on travel in Soliloquy or Advice to an Author (Treatise iii in Characteristicks), III.iii; but metrical effects are not obvious in it. Methods of scanning prose metrically were set out by John Mason in An Essay on the Power and Harmony of Prosaic Numbers (1749), especially chapters 4–6. In his survey of English prose writers from this standpoint (ch. 8) he takes a low view of Shaftesbury, who ‘hath gained the Character of a fine Author’ more from his name than his writings. He stresses the importance the ancient critics attached to ‘numerous composition’: Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii.8; Cicero, Orator; Quintilian, ix.4.

[d]Hand B: sentences set out as three paragraphs

[e]loud deleted

[f]Hand B

[g]natu deleted

[h]Hand B

[i]supplied conjecturally

[j]Hand B

[3 ]Waller’s To Phillis (‘Phillis! why should we delay’), in Witts Recreations (1645) entitled ‘The cunning Curtezan’. Line 15 (the first quoted) reads ‘Let not you and I inquire’; line 21 (the third), ‘For the joys we now may prove’. No alternative version of the poem, to Delia or another, seems to be known; though it appears in three Bodleian MSS.

[4 ]On Poetry: a Rhapsody (1733); lines 7–10 read:

• Our chilling Climate hardly bears
• A Sprig of Bays in Fifty Years;
• While ev’ry Fool his Claim alledges,
• As if it grew in common Hedges.

[k]Hand B

[5 ]Demetrius (On Style, i.16–17) gives two to four as the best number of cola or members to a period; Aristotle’s definition of the colon is quoted from Rhetoric, iii.9 (i.34); its structure is examined (i.1–8). The author of the Περὶ ἑρμηνείας, De Eloquentia, was formerly identified with Demetrius of Phalerum (300 bc) who is much too early. W. R. Roberts in his LCL edition (1927, 271–7) argues for Demetrius of Tarsus who lived in the latter decades of the first century ad and who may have served in Britain.

[l]last four words are at top of v.53; 52a and 52b (i.e. quire 14), in Hand B, are inserted between 52 and 53

[m]whatever it is deleted

[6 ]Pope, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, 95 (Pope wrote ‘has Poet . . .’); Milton, Paradise Lost, i.203.