N OT E S 
 
 ON THE COMPOSITION 
 
 O V 
 
 SCIF.NTlFiC PAPERS 
 
 rjJFFOR!) 4I.LBUTT 
 
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
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NOTES ON THE COMPOSITION OF 
 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 
 
MONJTIS SUM MINOR IPSE ME IS. 
 
NOTES 
 ON THE COMPOSITION 
 
 OF 
 
 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. CLIFFOED ALLBUTT 
 
 M.A., M.D., LL.D., D.SC, F.R.C.P.TkR.S., F.L.S.^ F.S.A. 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF PHYSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, HON. FELLOW 
 
 ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF IRELAND 
 
 !LonlJ0n 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK ; THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1904 
 
 'T 
 
 All rights resej ved 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 In the course of the year I peruse sixty or seventy 
 theses for the degree of M.B. and about twenty- 
 five for the degree of M.D. The matter of these 
 theses is good, it is often excellent ; in composition 
 a few are good, but the greater number are written 
 badly, some very ill indeed. The prevailing defect of 
 their composition is not mere inelegance ; were it so, 
 it were unworthy of educated men : it is such as to 
 obscure, to perplex, and even to hide or to travesty 
 the sense itself. Thus, for the judge who would 
 be just, many of the theses are very hard reading ; 
 and, meritorious as in substance they may be, are, 
 as they stand, unfit for the printer. The use of 
 thesis -writing is to train the mind, or to prove 
 that the mind has been trained ; the former purpose 
 is, I trust, promoted, the evidences of the latter 
 are scanty and occasional. Thus, when the Act 
 is kept, we are often forced, against our desire, 
 to dwell on faults of form to some exclusion of 
 the argument. It seemed to me, therefore, that if. 
 
vi SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 
 
 by a collection of the commoner errors and defects, 
 once for all I were deceived in my hope of bringing 
 about some reformation of the essays, I might at 
 any rate so economise my censures of the manner 
 as to devote myself in future to the matter only. 
 
 I fondly supposed that these criticisms of form 
 might be put together for the press, as an open 
 letter, in a few afternoons : I was sadly deceived. 
 The task proved to be far heavier than I had 
 anticipated. Moreover, for the humble duty I set 
 before myself I had made no special preparation; 
 I had read no grammars, nor the handbooks of 
 literary artists. The treatise of Mr. Miles on 
 Essay-writing appeared "before my manuscript was 
 finished, but by a mischance his volume — though 
 kindly dedicated to me — had failed to reach me. 
 Mr. Cornford's book appeared after my little work 
 was done. Yet I am glad I did not see these 
 books, or others of the kind, lest at the begin- 
 ning I might have been tempted by such bright 
 examples far out of my narrower way. The books 
 of Mr. Miles and of Mr. Cornford are systematic 
 and constructive, they survey the field and the 
 methods of authorship ; my hints, if, as I trust, 
 they have some organic unity, are but comments 
 on the more frequent or the more eminent defects 
 of scientific essays, and are as unsystematic and 
 occasional as the defects themselves. I have ob- 
 served no scheme or proportions in my parts but 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 those of the faults and errors after which they are 
 designed. 
 
 With the stuff of which theses are to he made 
 I have not concerned myself; for scientific papers 
 the kind of subject and the stuff are preordained. 
 If, as Mr. Cornford tells us, teachers and examiners 
 of the day are demanding essays not, as ours are, on 
 the rough and homely materials of common work, 
 but on the sublimer qualities of life, on Eloquence, 
 Enthusiasm, Courtesy, Thoroughness, Patriotism, 
 Drama, Travel, Education, Sympathy, Wit and 
 Humour, Eminence of Great Men, All is Vanity, 
 and the like — themes I have gleaned from his book, 
 if these issues of rich fancy and ripened experi- 
 ence are required of schoolboys and undergraduates, 
 it is well that they have Mr. Miles and Mr. Corn- 
 ford to teach them the cunning of it all, and to 
 " open yet another career for dulness." One day in 
 my remote past I was set to create such an essay 
 on my slate while my governess went out to tea : 
 Death was the subject she thought appropriate for 
 my handling. After much gasping in the vacuity 
 of my mind, in which was neither straw nor clay, 
 I became so fatigued as to be beset by the hand- 
 some word " erroneous " which that morning I had 
 admired in the mouth of one of my elders. Surely 
 this word made itself inevitable ; and on her return 
 my governess perused this brief but I venture to 
 think not unsuccessful little essay : " Death is an 
 
viii SCIENTIFIC PAPEES 
 
 erroneous circumstance.'' I publish it now for the 
 first time, as both for form and substance Mr. 
 Cornford's disciples may find it a useful pattern in 
 the art of " painting shadows in imaginary lines." 
 
 In obedience to a general desire I have divested 
 these critical notes of the peculiarly medical features 
 which they had at first; while preserving their 
 immediate purpose, I have exchanged many of my 
 medical instances for others of a pleasanter kind ; 
 nevertheless this tract is intended chiefly for my 
 own students, and is chiefly concerned therefore not 
 with letters as a whole but with so much of the form 
 and correctness of scientific papers as my experience 
 tells me is perverted or neglected by their authors. 
 
 My quotations are given for the most part 
 without acknowledgment ; for obvious reasons. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Inteoductoky .... ... 1 
 
 Fashion of academic essays, 1. Their purpose, 2. 
 Choice of subjects of scientific essays, 3. Their titles, 6. 
 Definitions, 7. Form, 8. Methods of composing, 11. 
 Revisions, 12. Logic of an essay, 15. Su/mmaries, 17. 
 Beginnings and ends, 18. References, 22. Dictation, 23. 
 Anyhow will do ! 23. Precision, 25. Formalism, 29. 
 Growth and decay in language, 31. Gaudiness, 33. 
 Slang, 35. Obsolescent words, 37. 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 On Composition ..... .40 
 
 Creation of instrument of language, 40. Grammar, 
 42. TAe chapter, 59. TAe paragraph, 60. TAe s««- 
 <«TOC«, 62. Ortic?- o/' clauses, 64. Suspension, 70. iSpKi 
 infinitive, 7 i. Chopping sentences, 77. Order of loords, 
 79. Choice of words, 84. Etymology, 85. Parte o/ 
 speech, 87. JfeeJfe wr-6s, 87. Exuberaiice of adjective, 
 88. Meagre vocabulary, 89. yagfs a?u^ ma'rmerisms, 
 91. Misused words, 93-114. Superfine words, 115. 
 Misused Latin words, 117. Tautology and redundancy, 
 118. Emphasis, 126. Metaphor, 130. Abstract style, 
 133. Quotations, 135. Sound, 137. Accent, 143. 
 Punctuation, 144. iitt/e cownsels, 147. Models of 
 prose, 150. 
 
 IX 
 
CHAPTEE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 It is in no desire to curtail my conversation with 
 candidates for degrees in Medicine that I publish 
 a few notes or hints on the composition of scientific 
 papers. The larger conditions of method and 
 material cannot be reduced to notes ; they will 
 always be with us for counsel and inquiry : but 
 there are many conditions in the economy of 
 argument, in the handling of common knowledge 
 and ideas, in the use of authority, in the forms and 
 aids of expression, which must be observed in all 
 exercises of the kind. My present purpose is to 
 instruct the candidate on minor points, that he 
 may be spared the smaller corrections which 
 occupy some of the time and pains which are 
 better spent upon the weightier contents of theses 
 submitted for the Acts for M.B. and M.D. degrees, 
 and of other academic essays. 
 
 It is one of the duties of a University to give 
 instruction, and much of its instruction may be 
 tested by suitably devised exercises, even by 
 some kinds of examination ; but it is our higher 
 
 B 
 
2 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 function to teach our students to think, and of this 
 accomplishment the thesis or essay is the chief 
 evidence. Thus it is that the Faculty of Medicine 
 in Cambridge regards the theses as necessary parts 
 of the exercises for degrees ; their use being two- 
 fold : to train the mind, and to show how far it has 
 been trained. The theses for M.B. are on the 
 whole remarkably good ; some of them indeed 
 reveal no inconsiderable power of thought and 
 research : if at this stage, however, we are content 
 with a fair measure of industry and intelligence, 
 from the candidate for M.D. or D.Sc, for a Fellow- 
 ship or Studentship, for one of the larger University 
 prizes, or for the graduation of an 'Advanced 
 Student,' more is expected ; from such a candidate 
 we expect some maturity of thought, some wealth 
 of personal experience, something of the art of 
 putting his thoughts ; and indeed some originality. 
 He must have made the subject his own ; his 
 treatment of it must bear the characters of 
 personal observation and reflexion which raise an 
 essay above the level of ordinary compilation, and 
 the powers of handling ideas and principles which 
 distinguish, or should distinguish, University train- 
 ing as contrasted with technical instruction. "A 
 man," says Sir Thomas Browne, " should be some- 
 thing that all men are not, and individual in some- 
 what beside his proper name." If in such essays 
 we find the cardinal qualities, we are lenient in 
 respect of some slovenliness of arrangement, or 
 some inaccuracy of language, unbecoming as such 
 faults may be. 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 3 
 
 That we do not always succeed in teaching 
 the student to think is but too evident in his 
 bewilderment when he has to find a subject for an 
 essay. Now, it is true that the proper choice of, a 
 subject is a difficult matter, one in which few 
 candidates can be independent of the assistance of 
 their elders ; yet too often the student is bewil- 
 dered, not in his choice of one among the infinite 
 number of subjects calling for inquiry, but in his 
 contentment with current formulas, in his lack 
 of perception of the immaturity of our science, 
 the hoUowness of much of our knowledge, and the 
 solidity of much of our ignorance. Students who 
 have attended my lectures may remember that I 
 try not only to teach them what we know, but 
 also to realise how little this is : in every direction 
 we seem to travel but a very short way before we 
 are brought to a stop ; our eyes are opened to see 
 that our path is beset with doubts, and that even 
 our best-made knowledge comes but too soon to an 
 end. In every chapter arises problem after problem 
 to beckon us on to farther investigation ; yet this 
 way and that we are so baffled by darkness and 
 ignorance that to choose one of these problems for 
 attack, one which is likely to repay his labour, 
 is often beyond the scope of a junior candi- 
 date, of a candidate for the degree of M.B. for 
 example ; and it is not easy for me to help 
 him, as I may help a candidate for M.D, The 
 subject for M.B. and like junior exercises must 
 be comparatively simple, the materials easily 
 accessible, and the research straightforward. In 
 
4 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 my own department, therefore, I usually advise 
 the M.B. candidate to consult a member of the 
 staff of his hospital, who will help him to some 
 inquiry for which, in the current clinical or patho- 
 logical work of the school, material happens to be 
 at hand. I have gratefully to acknowledge the 
 advice and guidance afforded to Cambridge students, 
 in the preparation of their theses, by members of the 
 staffs of large hospitals and laboratories elsewhere. 
 For M.B. I accept subjects from any department 
 of Medicine, including surgery and obstetrics ; for 
 M.D. topics definitely surgical, being proper rather 
 for the M.C., are avoided. 
 
 In the course of the last few months of his 
 work for the final examinations, the M.B. candidate 
 will do well to ponder over two or three subjects ; 
 so that, the examination over, he may obtain ap- 
 proval of that one which seems most convenient, 
 and set to work upon it without delay ; thus in a 
 few weeks his thesis may be completed. Some 
 candidates get the subject approved and the work 
 well forward before the final examination ; so that 
 by a successful candidate the Act may be kept 
 forthwith. If the thesis be not ready, the degree 
 of B.C., which is a ' double qualification,' can be 
 taken, and registered ; and the M.B. postponed till 
 the Act can be kept. 
 
 For advanced students, such as the candidate 
 for M.D., the undertaking is not so simple ; such 
 persons must enter upon a larger research, and one 
 less dependent upon ordinary advantages : indeed, 
 if out of residence, the candidate may have to 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 5 
 
 make his opportunities. Scientific methods — bio- 
 logical, chemical, or physical — are becoming longer 
 and stricter ; and, unless other occupation can be 
 set aside, a year's work may scarcely suffice for the 
 completion of a thesis. Hence it is of greater 
 importance that the advanced student should be 
 careful to select a fruitful subject, and to pursue it 
 from the first on a right method. On these larger 
 undertakings the advice of the Eegius Professor and 
 of teachers of special subjects in the University and 
 other schools is more available. 
 
 For a candidate for M.D. who has entered into 
 general practice, and who may have given such 
 hostages to fortune that he must devote the best 
 of his time to earning an income, the preparation 
 of a thesis is not impossible ; but it is difficult. 
 Half-hours he would willingly give to rest must 
 be devoted to work ; methods of research, readUy 
 undertaken in a laboratory or clinical school, are 
 now a heavy tax upon his ingenuity and his purse ; 
 processes which need continuous attention can 
 hardly be carried forward; libraries may be far 
 away, and apparatus costly or out of reach. Yet, 
 in spite of such hardships, every now and then a 
 candidate for M.D. emerges from general practice 
 with a thesis which is but the more excellent for 
 the self-denial and the high purpose which inspired 
 it. Of late years, however, I have reminded 
 graduates who intend to enter general practice, 
 and yet would merit the M.D. degree, to proceed 
 to these exercises as soon as the M.B. is attained — 
 during, we may suppose, the tenure of some hospital 
 
6 SCIENTIFIC PAPEKS chap. 
 
 or laboratory appointment. We are willing to read 
 theses and, in case of acceptance, to take the Act 
 for M.D. at any date after M.B- ; though of course 
 the degree cannot be conferred till the due period 
 is fulfilled. If, however, after his M.B. degree the 
 candidate must enter upon general practice without 
 delay, and yet would aim at the M.D., I advise him 
 to make some notes, however brief, of every case, 
 however trivial ; to supply himself with some 
 instruments of precision, according to his tastes and 
 aptitudes ; and for a few years to content himself 
 with gathering clinical and other material, and keep- 
 ing up his reading : thus in time a subject may 
 shape itself in his mind. I heard it said lately of 
 a very able physician in country practice that for 
 thirty years he had scarcely ever failed to obtain a 
 necropsy in his fatal cases. It is sad to think that 
 the wisdom of an observer, so earnest as he must 
 have been, should have died with him ; what a 
 thesis he might have written ! 
 
 Twice or thrice we have received from physicians 
 in country places a nosological survey of a certain 
 district ; the nature and incidence of disease being 
 compared with the local peculiarities and variations 
 of climate, soil, social habits, and the like. Prom 
 the time of White of Selborne it has been the good 
 custom of naturalists and antiquaries thus to examine 
 the features and relics of particular places ; by com- 
 bining the records of many such observers we might 
 in time put together a medical survey of the kingdom. 
 
 Title of a thesis. — From the title sent up for 
 approval I am often able to form some notion of 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 7 
 
 the composition which will follow. A concise and 
 pointed title preludes similar virtues in the essay ; 
 a weak or diffuse title, on the other hand, fore- 
 shadows a loose and vague argument. Or a title 
 may be concise enough, yet not to the point; e.g. 
 a candidate may suggest to me 'Three Cases of 
 Pernicious Anaemia.' This title suggests no more 
 than a report of the notes of the three cases ; 
 whereas the writer is probably aware that a mere 
 collection of cases in any number, without com- 
 parison and argument, is unacceptable. Many titles, 
 again, which give the indications of the argument 
 well enough, are designed to comprehend too much, 
 more than is necessary to denote the subject; or 
 are too heavily loaded with technical terms. First 
 impressions are strong impressions ; a title ought 
 therefore to be well studied, and to give, so far as its 
 limits permit, a precise indication of what is to come. 
 After the title the writer may contemplate some 
 definitions : but he will do well, especially in biology, 
 to distinguish between technical, verbal, or historical 
 definitions and attempts to define natural kinds. 
 Even in astronomy to define a constellation would 
 be no easy business ; and, as the departments of 
 science become more and more complex, definition 
 is recognised as a scholastical task which makes for 
 sterility. Classes we must create artificially, for the 
 convenience of thinking ; and of such classes we 
 must give short descriptions : but we shall beware 
 of taking short descriptions for definitions. On 
 precision of thinking I cannot say too much, but 
 to pack samples of thought in hard shells is to bury 
 
8 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 thought alive. We must beware of taking pro- 
 visional for radical distinctions. 
 
 Form. — The subject chosen, facts must be 
 collected, inferences formulated, and the whole 
 presented with due proportion in its several parts, 
 and in language as nervous and lucid as the 
 author can command. But, as strength and general 
 dexterity do not suffice to make a cricketer, so 
 knowledge and mental power do not suffice to make 
 a writer. No one feels vexed that he cannot dance, 
 paint, or ride to hounds without practice ; jet men 
 are apt to murmur that it is but the mere knack of 
 writing, a knack with which, according to them and 
 to Dogberry, some fellows are endowed by nature, 
 which is wanting to make their learning and talents 
 conspicuous. To those who have taken lifelong 
 thought how to write, who have striven painfully 
 with the craft of this supreme art, the view of 
 it as a happy gift seems a flippancy. In critical 
 jargon, indeed, the happiest word or phrase is 
 called ' inevitable,' but it becomes inevitable when 
 we have seen it ; till then it is but too evitable. 
 Let the candidate be assured that an easy and 
 interesting style, like easy cricket, implies hard 
 practice ; the prose which in Swift, in Newman, in 
 Proude, in Thackeray, runs so transparently that, 
 to him whose eye is not set for it, the medium is 
 unseen, comes of patience as enduring and training 
 as exquisite as the more effulgent phrase of Sir 
 Thomas Browne, Professor Euskin, or De Quincey. 
 No pieces are more ' spontaneous ' than the Fables 
 of La Fontaine, but the labour of correction and 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 9 
 
 revision which he gave to them seems to us 
 almost incredible. Butfon, we are told, rewrote his 
 prose twelve or fourteen times, and then would 
 have it read aloud to him, that he might note 
 where the reader hesitated. Gautier wrote at 
 terrific speed, and, it is said, never revised. What 
 is the consequence? Time has found out that 
 his brilliant fantastic work has no solidity : 
 that it is flamboyant, loaded, disorderly; and will 
 not endure. To me, the most of whose work is 
 done away from the desk, composition is painful; 
 to few men busy in affairs can it be otherwise than 
 painful : yet the man of science ought best to know 
 that style and matter can no more be dissociated 
 than skin and bone ; that if we write clumsily, 
 loosely, or disjointedly our thoughts are accord- 
 ingly. In scientific prose words should be used as 
 carefully as symbols in mathematics ; there are few 
 true synonyms in literature, none perhaps : words 
 have not only their stem meanings, but carry upon 
 them also many changes and tinctures of past uses 
 which blend inevitably in our sentences. The 
 word ' apostate,' for example, means far more than 
 an absentee or a dissenter, and a muscle more than 
 a little mouse ; monks rarely live alone ; your 
 anecdote is anything but clandestine ; rivals con- 
 tend for other than water rights, and hypocrites are 
 no longer confined to the theatre (p. 85). Yet 
 no accomplished writer forgets the traditions of 
 words, nor the incidental connotations thus clinging 
 to them ; nor that it is due to these evanescent 
 features that, large as the common elements of two 
 
10 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 words may be, no two are strictly synonymous. 
 "When to this we add the "genius of a whole 
 language," we shall comprehend that even if trans- 
 lation of a work from one tongue into another 
 may issue in a finer work of art, the pieces can 
 never be even approximately identical. To trans- 
 late prjropeia, ineptus, humanitas, or Dichtung, is 
 indeed impossible ; and to translate citUi into city 
 is an illustrative blunder. We have, then, to choose 
 our words not only as we should choose mathematical 
 symbols, or the parts of a diagram, but also as we 
 should lay in tints for a picture, or mix quarries for 
 a painted window. We shall be ashamed of the 
 beggarly vocabularies {vide p. 89) which seem to 
 satisfy most essayists ; and not occupying our- 
 selves with the flimsy and slatternly wares of the 
 railway bookstalls but with the masters of prose, 
 of our own time and of all time, we shall furnish j 
 our memories with a richer store of words and 
 thoughts, and, by weighing and comparing them, 
 educate our sense of their relative values. 
 
 In sketching the plan of a work, be it small 
 or great, one of the first questions to put to our- 
 selves is — For what readers is my treatise, paper, or 
 pamphlet intended ? This question we often fail to 
 keep vividly before ourselves : we are apt to forget 
 whom we are addressing; whether simple readers, 
 learned readers, advanced students, a section of the 
 public, or the general public. When full of his 
 subject, an author may soar away from the apt 
 and the convenient, and write so at large that 
 the essay comes home to no one : for some it is 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 11 
 
 too much, for others too little, for others useless 
 or alien. 
 
 Every writer has his own method of com- 
 posing ; I will describe that which I have found to 
 answer well enough. Por each subject on which T 
 may have to write, I set apart a labelled drawer, 
 or a large quarto envelope, and into it I throw the 
 proper cuttings, slips, and references to books or 
 papers. It is better to copy extracts at the time of 
 discovery than, when at work, to have to fetch 
 them, it may be from a distant library. Extracts 
 and summaries in Year-books, and the like, must 
 be accepted with caution ; often they pervert the 
 meaning, or are false to the context of the original 
 essay. My slips are of the size of cheques, that is 
 about eight inches by three ; two inches of one 
 end are left blank. I never make two entries on 
 one slip, nor write on both sides of any. When 
 I begin to write, these slips may have accumulated 
 for years, and the first work is to parcel the subject 
 into its several chapters, and to write the titles and 
 numbers of these on similar slips of stouter paper. 
 Next, having fixed a ' bulldog clip ' upon each of 
 these capital slips, I distribute under them the 
 minor slips proper to each. The blank ends of 
 the slips pass under the clip, so that no writing is 
 concealed ; and thus secured the slips are as easily 
 fumbled as the leaves of a cheque-book. During 
 this part of the work changes in the chapters, or in 
 the number or order of them, often suggest them- 
 selves ; some need division, some are merged in 
 others. 
 
12 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 The next task is to arrange the slips within 
 each clip in logical order, when many obsolete notes 
 are destroyed, others are blended and rewritten. 
 From the slips thus arranged I write a hasty iirst 
 draft of the article. I do not destroy each slip as 
 it is used, but I draw a line across it and store 
 it, lest it be wanted again. Eound three sides of 
 the manuscript a wide margin is left. The work 
 may now be regarded as half done ; I usually make 
 four drafts at least before the manuscript is ready 
 for the printer. 
 
 For the second draft I delete redundant words, 
 phrases, sentences, and paragraphs; by doing this 
 rigorously, and pulling the rest together, from 
 one-sixth to one-fifth of this manuscript, or even 
 more of it, disappears. Many sentences are but 
 repetitions ; others are got rid of by the insertion 
 elsewhere of a minor claiise, or of an adjective ; 
 thus : — 
 
 Other factors, such as rickets or tuberculosis, must be 
 taken into account, as any one of these will have an adverse 
 influence on the case. 
 
 Here ' adverse ' should be inserted before ' factors,' 
 and the sentence ended at ' account.' Eemeniber 
 the defence of a prolix report :^—" I hadn't time to 
 make it shorter." Transfers also are made now ; 
 sentences and paragraphs which would stand better 
 elsewhere are translated. Again, excogitate matter 
 and argument as we may before beginning to write, 
 yet, as we write, thought develops, and may de- 
 velop considerably ; so the later part of the first 
 draft proceeds on larger lines, and is fuller in 
 
1 INTEODUCTOEY 13 
 
 thought than the earlier part. In the second draft, 
 therefore, the writer has to consider the earlier part 
 iu the light of the later, and has to remodel the 
 narrower conception of this part on the hroader con- 
 ception proper to the whole. This is the toughest 
 of the tasks of revision, for it may be necessary to 
 break up and reconstruct the piece. As this first 
 reading proceeds an index is easily jotted down ; if 
 the work needs no index the list is nevertheless 
 very convenient in making later insertions and 
 corrections, and in detection of repetitions. 
 
 On the third draft the composition is submitted 
 to a still closer revision ; but the main work of this 
 stage is to recast paragraphs and sentences till they 
 run logically, and bear but one meaning, and this 
 inevitably: perverse constructions and equivocal or 
 defective words give way to their betters. Ornamental 
 and figurative passages also undergo purgation : in 
 scientific papers purgation should generally go to 
 expurgation; yet our writing should be lively as 
 well as true, and some happy allusions, if distilled 
 to their essence, may be carried in upon an adjective, 
 or upon a noun coloured by an apt association. An 
 author should form the habit of setting down no 
 word, not even the definite article, without weighing, 
 less and less consciously as his habit grows, its 
 primary meaning, its derivative meanings, and its 
 colour in the particular context. From instant to 
 instant he will turn each word over as shrewdly as 
 a thrush turns a pebble. An intelligent friend of 
 mine once exclaimed, " You don't mean to say one 
 has to think on every word before one puts it 
 
14 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 down ? " Certainly ; but by habit these apprecia- 
 tions become automatic, as swift judgment iu a 
 game or the mazy dance of a lacemaker's bobbins 
 becomes automatic. When a distinguished physi- 
 cian proclaimed to us the other day without quali- 
 fication that " The number of the infectious diseases 
 is by no means complete," he had not formed this 
 habit ; for we may hope that he meant no more 
 than our discrimination of such as we have. 
 
 If the writer has endeavoured to enrich his 
 vocabulary, he will find that by the wider choice 
 of words he will gain in truth as well as in liveli- 
 ness ; his expressions will become more and more 
 apt ; he will know, for instance, when to say ' begin,' 
 when to say ' commence ' ; when to say ' theory,' 
 when to say ' opinion,' ' notion,' ' conjecture,' or 
 ' guess.' Or a sentence may be stuffed, like a bag, 
 with valuable matter ; yet unless the clauses run 
 in the order of the thought, and by still subtler 
 arrangement emphasise its main points and posi- 
 tions, the reader's attention will flag. Not only the 
 clauses, then, but the words also must be placed 
 exactly (p. 79) ; for emphasis, like a ' call ' at whist, 
 may be given by slight transpositions, even of single 
 words (p. 127). It is deplorable that most writers, 
 by ignoring the order of words and clauses, obfus- 
 cate their own meanings, blunt our insight into 
 thought, and make for listlessness both in author 
 and reader. 
 
 Before the final revision let some considerable 
 time intervene — ^ say a week or two at least ; 
 in order that meanwhile the mind may meditate 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 15 
 
 subconsciously on the subject, and that the final 
 reading be done' with refreshed attention ; it is 
 surprising with what new critical and constructive 
 interest one conies again to a subject and to a 
 manuscript which for a while have been laid aside. 
 Moreover, before undertaking a critical re-perusal, 
 provide for some leisure, so as to read not by bits, 
 but over a good stretch of the manuscript at once, 
 and to attain a large survey of its scope and bear- 
 ings. Never compose when tired, nor in the false 
 confidence of tea and late hours. At this hour the 
 composition seems to be beautiful and spontaneous ; 
 but it is fairy gold, in the colder light of the 
 morning it turns to ashes. 
 
 The logic of an essay. — Speaking generally, 
 it is better to compose a scientific essay, and to 
 construct its limbs, not on the inductive plan on 
 which the research was pursued, but deductively. 
 In investigation we step first upon the bottom facts ; 
 then we make short inferences, and test them by 
 more facts ; these inferences widen and widen, and 
 in their turns are tested, and so on ; such is the 
 course of research : but as demonstration the 
 system is not telling; the student is held too 
 long in suspense (vide p. 59). This sentence I 
 borrow from another use, as it may serve briefly 
 to illustrate this advice : — 
 
 The Presbyterians threw their freedom down without 
 casting one glance on the past at the feet of the most heart- 
 less tyrant. 
 
 This is the order in which the thought may well 
 
16 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 have arisen in the excogitation. But we shall see 
 how much better it is to alter the order of ex- 
 cogitation, and by a new synthesis to carry back 
 ' without casting one glance at the past ' to the 
 beginning. It is better to begin, then, by setting 
 forth certain more general views; and from these 
 to proceed to closer and closer quarters with the 
 particulars on which our position is to be estab- 
 lished. Logic does not make matter, it arranges 
 matter already gathered. I sometimes waste time 
 in the futile wish that Epicurus' word ' Canonic ' 
 had superseded ' Logic ' ; for, clear our minds as we 
 may. Logos does no doubt suggest the essence of 
 things ; but ' Canonic ' suggests no more than rules 
 of thought. Logic has always sought to " go into 
 the merits " wherein it has no business to meddle. 
 Logic is not all, nor nearly all. La logique mkie 
 aux ahimes. Language, like good manners, owes 
 not its charm only but also its force and pene- 
 tration to incalculable, imponderable elements. 
 The line of the dryest argument overflows logic 
 in all directions, reason turns and doubles on itself; 
 were it possible to photograph it in a flash, its 
 course would appear not as a straight line, but as 
 one of curves and zigzags ; thus as it goes it falls 
 under changing lights, and intimate metaphors creep 
 in even unbidden. Moreover, an author cannot but 
 be aware of his audience; he receives its influence 
 into his fancy, and betrays his wariness by glances 
 and stage asides. In the following sentence, plain 
 as it is, we may note prospects opened and passed 
 in flashes, quick doubles, and glints striking hither 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 17 
 
 and thither. Note the telling aside to the reader in 
 the one ironical word ' usurping ' : — 
 
 A lay-papist will first consider his abbey-lands ; . . . 
 if zeal get the better of the law ... his new humble con- 
 fessor may be raised to a bishoprick, and from thence look 
 down superciliously upon his patron, or which is worse, 
 run to take possession for God Almighty of his abbey, in 
 such manner as the usurping landlord shall hardly be 
 admitted to be so much as a tenant to his own lands. 
 
 Again, in its tones and rhythms language plays 
 upon us as the instrument of a musician (p. 137); 
 heyond its melodies and its scores, it is attuned to 
 us in an infinite sphere of ' wireless ' vibrations, born 
 partly of its own fibre, partly of the fibre of the 
 master; these harmonies obey no formal call, and 
 defy all reckonings. 
 
 Whether, then, we decide to arrange our matter 
 inductively or deductively, the place of logic, or 
 ' canonic,' is to see that the order and development 
 of thought are followed precisely from step to step. 
 As human minds are substantially alike, if the 
 writer observes the best order of his own thought, 
 the reader will take his line quickly and, for assent 
 or dissent, perceive his drift. 
 
 Summaries. — On the completion of a long thesis, 
 or important scientific essay, it is well to draw up 
 a syllabus of the argument and to place it at the 
 beginning ; in any case let the conclusions be 
 resumed succinctly at the end : it is not for the 
 author to compel the reader to peruse his essay. 
 
 For students whose essays approach the field 
 of letters an interesting discourse might be written 
 
 c 
 
18 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 on the beginnings and ends of hooks and essays. Of 
 ends authors of theses, and others, seem to be too 
 careless ; yet how telling a place is the end of a 
 paper for a weighty reflexion, or summary view 
 of the field. All writers, however, even the least 
 skilful, are, in the degree of their skill, at some care 
 how to begin. An unpractised writer, for sheer 
 helplessness at the outset, may never begin ; he may 
 abandon his work in despair. A witty beginning is 
 something of a liberty ; for an emphatic beginning 
 the reader is not yet attuned ; nor is he attuned to 
 a ponderous introduction. To begin naturally and 
 interestingly is no mean art. 
 
 I was ever of opinion that the honest man who married 
 and brought up a large family did more service than he who 
 continued single and only talked of population. 
 
 Thus begins the Vicar of Wakefield, and what could 
 be happier ? The opening sentence touches the 
 heart of the story ; it is sententious, but its senti- 
 ment is instantly lightened by a ray of humour. 
 Again : 
 
 As I walked through the wilderness of this world I 
 lighted on a certain place where was a Denn ; and I laid me 
 down in that place to sleep : and as I slept I dreamed a 
 Dream. 
 
 Here again the heart of the story is touched; and 
 by the wilderness and the dream we are carried 
 at once into the realm of the imagination. The 
 opening chapter of The Antiquary is well known, I 
 trust, to every one. Miss Austen's stories all open 
 well ; e.g. — 
 
I INTRODUCTOEY 19 
 
 No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her 
 infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine ; 
 
 and so on. These are indeed romantic instances ; 
 still, if we turn to scientific works, we shall find 
 in the eminent of them the like art of beginning 
 happily. The Essay on Human Understanding com- 
 mences thus : 
 
 Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest 
 of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and 
 dominion which he has over them, it is certainly a subject, 
 even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. 
 
 The Decline and Fall of the Boman Empire com- 
 mences with a short sentence : 
 
 In the second century of the Christian Aera, the empire 
 of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the 
 most civilised portion of mankind. 
 
 Herschel begins the Preliminary/ Discourse with like 
 propriety, if not with like distinction : 
 
 The situation of man on the globe he inhabits, and over 
 which he has obtained the control, is in many respects 
 exceedingly remarkable. 
 
 To turn from books to essays : Macaulay does 
 not begin admirably ; he opens mouth like a 
 watch -dog. Matthew Arnold is happier, as in the 
 well-known opening of his essay on Keats : 
 
 Poetry, according to Milton's famous saying, should be 
 ' simple, sensuous, impassioned.' No one can question the 
 eminence/ in Keats's poetry of the quality/ of sensuousness. 
 
 Here, in spite of the three y's, a fitting and lofty 
 
20 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 note is struck at the outset. Or, opening by chance 
 a volume of his Causeries, I may translate the first 
 sentence of Sainte-Beuve's essay on Jouffroy : 
 
 There is a generation which, born quite at the end of the 
 last century, still in its infancy or immaturity under the 
 Empire, came of age, and put on the robe of manhood in the 
 midst of the storms of 1814 and 1815. 
 
 A fine opening by contrast to a study of that placid 
 and limpid intelligence. All Bacon's essays open 
 well, some magnificently. 
 
 But I may not multiply examples ; these will 
 suggest to us how to open a subject aptly, intimately, 
 and also with dignity or vivacity. "We shall not begin 
 with a crude or heavy lump of our matter, yet we 
 shall try to touch the keynote of the subject, and to 
 engage in the argument easily but directly. We 
 have seen that the ' beginnings ' of great writers are 
 direct ; we shall not begin, then, with apologies, with 
 wayward or fanciful approaches, nor with any kind 
 of skirmishing. After these great examples, we shall 
 try to give first some glimpse into the heart of the 
 matter, to put the reader at our point of view, and 
 then to lead him briskly into the subject. Hence 
 the beginning is not to be written until we have so 
 cast our argument that we can perceive the exact 
 place whence the best glimpse of its purport is 
 to be had. We may encourage those essayists 
 who may fall so shy of the beginning as never to 
 enter upon their work at all, by assuring them that 
 it is not necessary to begin their essay till they 
 have ended it. 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 21 
 
 Of ends I will only say, " Do not end anyhow " ; 
 let your leave-taking be easy, gracious, and impressive 
 in proportion to the theme ; not ponderous, pompous, 
 epigrammatic, or austere. From a fine writer, one 
 from whose works I might cull many admirable 
 features, I will venture to quote the end of a book : 
 
 And this age of ours, if, like its predecessors, it can 
 boast of something of which it is proud, would, could it read 
 the future, doubtless find also miich of which it would be 
 ashamed. 
 
 A true, but rather unkind farewell ! A charming 
 essay by another hand ends with the reflexion that 
 the ' argument in which we have been engaged is 
 not addressed to all men . . .' but, in short, to the 
 initiated reader. This is too fastidious a farewell ; 
 even querulous perhaps. After turning over a few 
 scientific books lying near me in search of happier 
 ends, I translate this from Daremberg's History of 
 the Medical Sciences : 
 
 That which to-day makes the strength of the medical 
 sciences, which assures their future destiny, is, if we reflect 
 upon tradition and history, that all savants worthy of the 
 name, from one end of the civilised world to the other, put- 
 ting aside the rivalries of system, and shaking the dominion 
 of routine authority whencesoever it may derive, seek each 
 other and meet on the common ground of observation, 
 experiment, and freedom of thought. 
 
 For literary essayists the end of Mackail's Zatin 
 Literature may serve as an example : 
 
 In the stately structure of that imperial language they 
 embodied those qualities which make the Roman name most 
 abidingly great — honour, temperate wisdom, humanity, 
 
2'A SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 courtesy, magnanimity ; and the civilised world still returns 
 to that fountain-head, and finds a second mother-tongue in 
 the speech of Cicero and Virgil. 
 
 And, for my own sake, let me add the end of Colet's 
 Accidence, surely one of the most touching farewells 
 in literature : 
 
 Wherfore I praye you, al lytel babys, al lytel chyldren, 
 lerne gladly. . . . Trustyng of this begynnyng that ye shal 
 procede and growe to parfyt lyterature, and come at the last 
 to be grete clarkes. And lyfte up your lytel whyte handes 
 for me, whiche prayeth for you to God : to whom be all 
 honour and glory. . . . Amen {Lupton's Life, p. 177). 
 
 These are notable examples ; ordinary papers and 
 short treatises must end in modest proportion to 
 their contents. 
 
 References. — After the summary of conclusions 
 append a sufficient list of the books and papers 
 consulted during the research : those which the 
 author has personally consulted in the original, 
 howsoever he were directed thither, he may enter 
 as his own references ; when he has not gone 
 himself to the source, he must enter and duly 
 attribute the reference as a quotation. The writer 
 who learns to verify his references will learn also 
 the curious lesson that various readers see various 
 meanings in the same words, or context ; a con- 
 fusion due, in some part no doubt, to ambiguities 
 of expression. 
 
 Not infrequently in the fourth draft of the essay 
 such rehandling will suggest itself that another and 
 yet another copy has to be made for the printer. 
 Mr. Bryce tells i»s that Green made ten drafts of 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 23 
 
 the first chapter of Tlie Making of England; 
 Green who, of full and accurate writers, was one 
 of the swiftest whose methods are known to us. 
 
 Dictation. — Many authors dictate their matter 
 to a shorthand writer, who makes a fair copy for 
 the author's revision. Personally I find this method 
 very defective ; and I fancy I note in other authors 
 the defects of it. It saves much trouble, there is 
 no doubt; and for temporary purposes, especially 
 for addresses to be spoken, it is convenient. But 
 the language of literature, both in scope and variety, 
 is very different from that of conversation. As I 
 was writing a sentence on a previous page of this 
 essay I lacked a certain word, and the word did not 
 come to me till the afternoon of the following day : 
 what about the typewriter's patience ? We do not 
 always realise how lean and cursory a discourse may 
 appear on the printed page which in conversation or 
 public speech was telling enough. To write prattle, 
 save for some light and ephemeral purpose, is as 
 inept as to talk like a book. If the reader conceives 
 that the felicitous narrative, or gossipy prose of 
 Sterne, Elia, or Thackeray is but written talk, let 
 him read a page or two, close the book, and try to 
 reproduce it. In such prose the impression of 
 unstudied ease is a product of the finest pains, of 
 pains unknown to those who are prepared with the 
 stuff but not with the art of letters {vide p. 63). 
 
 Anyhow will do ! — ^But the ' practical man ' 
 will say that these are trivial or ingenious in- 
 ventions ; why all this torment of form if in any 
 shape he can shovel the stuff he has to dispose of 
 
24 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 into the reader's head ? Well, in the first place a 
 writer who writes to convince, and not merely to 
 see his name in print, must learn to lay his mind 
 alongside that of the reader. The reader must be 
 carried along in a quick and equable current. It 
 vexes him to have to return upon sentence after 
 sentence in order to revise the author's particular 
 meanings by the general tenor of his argument ; 
 yet in reading current prose this vexation is so 
 continual that we scarcely realise the burden and 
 tax of it. A sentence, as it stands, bears a certain 
 meaning ; the author, however, retorts testily, " Oh, 
 you know I did not mean that " : but he has written 
 it ; and it is not fair for an author to think in the 
 rough, to scribble unchastened whatsoever comes 
 into his head, so that, as Erasmus said, "Apollo 
 only could discern his meaning," and to throw the 
 control and revision upon the vigUance of the 
 reader. For instance : — ' It is our duty not to 
 give hasty judgments till we have all the facts 
 before us ' (and then may we ?). ' He abjured the 
 errors of Protestantism to embrace those of Catholi- 
 cism ' (is this sarcasm or muddle ?). ' This teaching 
 if much longer denied threatens to be attended 
 with disastrous results.' 'He complained of the 
 information which was being kept from him.' ' In- 
 temperance predisposed to, and prohaUy caused this 
 disease.' ' A child who has been in a cretinous 
 condition for years will not improve to such an 
 extent as one who has been detected early ' (as if 
 mere detection would do him good). In few theses, 
 even of plain matter enough, have I not to prop up 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 25 
 
 maimed or rickety conceptions, to dissect conven- 
 tional phrases or equivocal words, and to sweep aside 
 page after page of loose vesture which nowhere fits 
 the thought closely, nor moves freely with it. A 
 thinker who has grappled with his thoughts may 
 write a burdened or too obscurely allusive style, 
 especially if his subject matter be complex and 
 recondite ; but never, anything so ungainly as this : 
 
 Eschatology naturally interests a region essentially con- 
 nected with a theory of the conflict of good and evil 
 powers. 
 
 In nature there is no great and small; the 
 careful precision, even of a word, often so bites 
 into the matter as to lead the author to revise 
 or enlarge his thought ; slovenly writing is not 
 only for the most part slovenly thinking, but 
 slovenly habits of expression corrode thought in 
 its very substance. " 77 <yap tmv Xojccv Kpicri<; 
 TToWrji ia-Ti irelpa^ reKevralov eiri'yevvTjfia" 
 Professor Glover has said well, " The man who gives 
 forth habitually what is immature falls into a 
 habit of miscarriage." For example, a schoolmaster 
 wrote the other day, 'Such a largely empiric 
 science as educational theory,' etc. — this is slovenly 
 language because the thinking is slovenly. 
 John Hunter, an illiterate genius clutching in- 
 articulately at the evasive shadows of truth, 
 commands our labour and our time ; but are we to 
 be delayed and tormented by the formless, halting, 
 and tortuous essays of any laboratory worker, not 
 oppressed by a transcendent range of insight, nor 
 
26 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 by the remote or rugged nature of his matter, but 
 content to dwell in sheer illiteracy, disorderliness, 
 or shallowness ? If through dimness of meaning 
 the mind is led towards new, if vague, apprehen- 
 sions, we are enticed to read the riddle : veritatis 
 tanquam umbram confectamw ; but an obscurity 
 which begins and ends in confusion disgusts us. 
 The seat among the immortals of letters prepared 
 for Tennyson may be denied, for its ungainliness 
 and its antics, to the more vivid and penetrating 
 soul of Browning. Hunter felt as deeply as 
 any of his disciples how heavy was the burden 
 of his illiteracy, a burden, indeed, which has 
 prevented the fuU recognition of his genius by 
 posterity; but on the other hand we shall beware 
 of a merely specious lucidity : Cicero did not say 
 " Omne quod dilucide dicitur praeclare mihi dici 
 videtur," but " Omne quod de re bona dilucide," etc. 
 I wish I dare name some serious authors who have 
 vogue in our day chiefly by virtue of a plausible 
 style — for them I use the word ' style ' gladly. Their 
 pomp is not that of Gibbon, their complexity is 
 not that of Acton, their sententiousness is not 
 that of Thucydides or of Tacitus. Pomp may 
 be pompousness, complexity entanglement, smooth- 
 ness dulness, brevity baldness. Lady Welby has 
 reminded us that "if new interests and new com- 
 prehensions enter into our work there must be 
 effort ; the previsional thinker must be obscure at 
 first to him whose mind is bounded by past and 
 present '' ; but at any rate let there be no ambiguity 
 up to the place of taking off into the "noble dimness": 
 
I INTEODUCTORY 27 
 
 by repeated and instructed effort we may learn to 
 set forth even new things with truth of scope and 
 direction, if not with fulness of comprehension. 
 
 Not a few intelligent authors come to a 
 standstill in their mental life because they do 
 not train themselves to model and balance and 
 clarify their ideas, their chapters, their sentences 
 and their words : they have not been in the 
 habit of asking themselves the exact quality 
 of each word as they use it ; how sentence 
 is related to sentence, and paragraph to para- 
 graph, each modifying the other, and yet each 
 in due proportion and subordination to the main 
 purpose. Few writers set themselves the ques- 
 tions, " Have I for myself thought all this out 
 clearly, both in mass and in detail; or am I 
 but echoing common notions and paying out make- 
 shift phrases ? " " Have I put my sentences so that 
 the most careless or captious reader cannot nail 
 down my words to any other meaning than that 
 which, whether right or wrong, I intended and 
 conceived ? " " Have I done my reader the 
 honour to suppose him capable of sustained thought, 
 or have I written after the manner of the slipshod 
 journalists who cater for the omnibus ? " Slatternly 
 writing may well be compared with careless and 
 superficial laboratory methods, inaccurate references 
 and controls, and imperfect notes of processes. By 
 such methods smart or even pregnant ideas come to 
 nothing. It is strange that scientific men, who 
 habitually work in dimensions of a ten-thousandth 
 of an inch, are either blind to gross confusions of 
 
28 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES ohap. 
 
 argument, and to false refractions of meaning, or 
 regard them with indifference. 
 
 By disorderly writing, then, we fall into worse 
 things than muddle : we blunt the probity of our 
 minds ; we slur over difficulties and cover up ignor- 
 ances. Content to be slovens, we lose our respect 
 for truth, and blunt our consciences. On the other 
 hand, when in an author's prose we perceive un- 
 obtrusive scruples, and feel that his conscience 
 is tender for the Tightness of things, we are disposed 
 to give him credit in greater issues for the rectitude 
 which he exhibits in the less (vide p. 129). 
 
 Is it then for sheer incompetence that authors 
 are thus apt to write what they do not mean ; to 
 lose sight of the difference between purpose and 
 purport ? Not altogether ; we are apt no doubt to 
 be too readily satisfied with a foggy context, but we 
 are apt also to qualify our words to ourselves by 
 our private mental habits, bias and preposses- 
 sions; by elements, many of them indeed true and 
 proper enough, of which we casually think but do 
 not bring explicitly into view. Spontaneity is 
 good ; but the art of writing is to be deliberate 
 while seeming spontaneous (pp. 8, 9). How is the 
 reader to pick up the author's clues, to interpret a 
 context by his idiosyncrasy, to fill up an argument 
 by his latent provisions ? The reader has to accept, 
 and ought to accept, what is expressed, and to 
 import no more ; or the argument will be adulter- 
 ated by yet another batch of elusive apprehensions, 
 idiosyncrasies, and prepossessions. 
 
 Again, the author who does not try to make 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 29 
 
 his meaning clear and unequivocal will suffer in 
 neglect for his carelessness. A friend asked me 
 why his really good work is neglected ? I know, 
 but I cannot tell him ; it is because he writes so ill 
 that other and often less able authors, who respect 
 their reader, get the credit. In a recent review 
 of a very important book by a very important 
 person I read as follows : — " Nevertheless there is 
 such inextricable jumble of etiology, pathology, 
 symptoms, treatment and prognosis, that it would 
 be quite impossible for a reader to obtain informa- 
 tion on a particular point without perusal of the 
 whole section. . . . Professor X. has undoubted 
 powers and a high reputation . . . but as a writer 
 of books his want of method and system clearly 
 condemns him." And serve him right : others will 
 take the credit. Take pains, therefore ; with your- 
 self first, then with your reader. 
 
 Formalism. — Persons of taste and scholarship 
 are heard to say that to cherish the language, to 
 be jealous of its privileges, to ordain its decrees, 
 to husband its wealth, and to look askance at its 
 ephemeral accretions, is to substitute a mechanical 
 for a natural growth, and to bring about not de- 
 velopment but formalism and stagnation. We 
 must remember, however, that, if wild growth be 
 good for young organisms, in maturity exuberance 
 must give way to a more deliberately chastened and 
 discriminating economy. In the child untamed 
 expansion, or even extravagance, may be whole- 
 some or winsome ; in the discipline of the adoles- 
 cent' some taking of thought, some austerity of 
 
30 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 rule, must enter consciously into our methods. 
 Grammarians who think that to write anyhow is 
 to leave language free for spontaneous growth, are 
 forgetful of the truth that conscious processes of 
 development must enter into the advance of a 
 mature language as they enter into the growth of 
 mature nations and individuals. The phase of 
 'absent-minded beggar '-dom is not a phase of 
 maturity, and to continue in this state is to carry 
 the child into manhood. To foster development 
 on conscious lines needs, among other things, the 
 ' historical sense,' whereby we discriminate the 
 changes which lie in the lines of growth from 
 those which are features of degeneration or re- 
 version. Eor example, if ethics in Eussia, America, 
 France, or England be in a welter, whether in any 
 one of them it be the chaos which precedes develop- 
 ment, or the wreckage of corruption, we shall know 
 largely, mainly perhaps, by the historical sense. So 
 with language ; at our age we must open our eyes 
 to know the strife of fruitfulness from the confusion 
 of decay. 
 
 Indifferently to let our language shuffle along 
 as it may is not always to draw new and racy 
 elements from the children of nature ; often it is 
 to abandon it to a respectable populace craving for 
 coarse stimulants and factitious vehemence ; and 
 this makes not for development, but for extrava- 
 gance and exhaustion ; not for directness, simplicity, 
 and touch with nature, but for meretriciousness and 
 sophistry. But to the subject of new words and 
 slang I shall return presently {vide p. 35). 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 31 
 
 What are, then, the marks of growth or of decay, 
 of deterioratioa or of enrichment, of living as con- 
 trasted with morbid changes ? Do we see the 
 marks of the one or of the other in our own lan- 
 guage ? do good and fertile words suffer neglect or 
 degradation, grow sterile or empty of significance ? 
 This is too large an inquiry for this place, but 
 some part of it we must consider. One of the 
 well -recognised features of development is differ- 
 entiation, the elaboration of several parts for specific 
 ends ; as, on the other hand, a blurring of specific 
 quality and a confusion of parts in a common 
 function are marks of rudiment or retrogression. 
 Now, in language can we note such tendencies, and 
 if so whither do they tend ? If we find that in a 
 love of excess, or of coarse stimulants, the biggest 
 word to be had is to be used for ordinary, or not very 
 extraordinary, occasions ; and if thus many words 
 which had gained finer shades of meaning are worn 
 down again into indifference ; if, for instance, every 
 mishap is a ' disaster,' every guess or opinion a 
 ' theory ' ; if I write cursorily to a friend that I 
 am ' anxious ' to see him ; is it progress or deterior- 
 ation ? We have seen (p. 1 0) that in English 
 there are few synonyms or none ; that between 
 every pair of approximate words there- is a differ- 
 ence : the more, then, the variety of the words of a 
 language the higher its development and the richer 
 its resources ; the more the reversion of words once 
 differentiated the deeper its backsliding towards 
 mean or rudimentary phases. But to gain and to keep 
 a wealth of differentiated parts are largely matters 
 
32 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES ohap. 
 
 of tact and vigilance ; that is, of literary culture 
 and discernment : and the no less certain defects of 
 these qualities, the dangers of finicking and pre- 
 ciosity, or of over-sophistical wit, are not to deter us 
 from thoughtful appreciations. Pedantry signifies 
 not precision and nicety but a defective sense of 
 relative values, and a stationary if acquisitive mind. 
 Precision and nicety are not against simplicity but 
 for it ; they make for the shortest w&j and the 
 least expenditure. Finicking and preciosity, on the 
 other hand, are an otiose labour of saying common 
 things in uncommon ways : — e.g. the dirt of the 
 purlieu 'brought a scum to the eyes and a tetter to 
 the houses ' ; — whereas, as Canon Ainger said, the 
 mark of a great writer is to say uncommon things 
 in common ways. 
 
 A manly stile, fitted to manly eares 
 
 Best 'grees witli wit ; not that wMoli goes so gay, 
 
 And commonly the gawdy liv'ry weares 
 
 Of nice corruptions, which the times do sway. 
 
 Speaking generally, the greater the mere dex- 
 terity, the more obviously cunning the detail, the 
 lower the art. A broad and summary handling, 
 if as unerring as in the later works of the greatest 
 artists, of Eembrandt, for example, or Hals or 
 Velasquez, is incomparably finer than niggling ; 
 yet this breadth is not attained by spurious ease 
 or vaunting brush : a study of the earlier work of 
 the great masters of light and line will reveal 
 the indefatigable choice of vital accent through 
 which this breadth was painfully won. [It is 
 not by over-curious trimming, then,*that force and 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 33 
 
 precision are attained, but by masterful seleation 
 from the store of many harvests. 
 
 Gaudiness. — Young authors are prone to eccen- 
 tricity and finery of style. An unchastened love 
 for letters, welcome as it is in the young, is readily 
 caught by uncommon words and phrases, as a girl 
 is attracted by gauds ; so it is that in the essays 
 of young authors we note violent metaphors, dash- 
 ing phrases, archaisms, odd spellings, slang, split in- 
 finitives, and such tinsel ; and the clever young men 
 turn upon us with the exclamation — Why should 
 I not stick these gems, old or new, into my writ- 
 ing if I think them effective? Because, young man,, 
 you may not paint and patch your mother's cheeks. 
 Dauber as you are ; go down on your knees before 
 your noble inheritance — the noblest speech that the 
 world has seen : when you have known its loveli- 
 ness, when your ears have opened to its melodies, 
 when you have counted but a little of its riches, 
 you will shudder as at the thought of retouching 
 a masterpiece. It is true that language is a living 
 thing, that if it congeal it will die ; but before you 
 are to take in hand to enrich the rich, to paint 
 the lily, you must reckon its wealth, and feel 
 its magic of , form and harmony. Then you may, 
 but you will not, write of 'going without saying' 
 (for 'speaks for itself), 'leaping at the eyes,' 
 ' giving furiously to think,' ' playing rSles' ' giving on 
 the street,' bringing a matter ' sur le tapis ' (or, far 
 worse, ' on the carpet '), prefixing ' forewords,' and 
 the rest of it : tricks which are as ungainly as they 
 are profane. The inlay of a foreign or affected word 
 
 D 
 
34 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 or phrase is not to be justified by saying that it is 
 good French, German, or Latin. One may dress on 
 occasion in a foreign or national costume, but in Pall 
 Mall to wear a black cock's plume in a silk hat 
 would look merely odd. In the words of Boyle : 
 " It is not the use but the affectation of exotic 
 terms which is unworthy of a philosopher" {vide 
 p. 126, 1. 22). 
 
 Some persons afPect oddity as a pretence of 
 liberty or character. Character it may suggest, 
 but let the actor be sure that the character is 
 worth suggesting ; even Sterne did not make all his 
 oddities appear lovely. In respect of liberty, indeed, 
 the bargain is often a bad one ; to emerge from the 
 cover of convention is to attract the public eye, 
 and if the eye is to be attracted the performance 
 must be faultless. In prose, as in dress and in 
 manners, there are conventions. To dress in peach- 
 blossom may be well, and to write in peach-blossom 
 may be well when the meaning is rare ; but much 
 good prose has to travel over the plains, and 
 plain things are best said in a plain way. Not 
 even the talent of Mr. Pater succeeded in making 
 the peach-blossom style generally delightful. Fine 
 or big words, or" an unusual order should be held in 
 reserve for moments of emphasis (p. 128); to seek 
 on tiptoe for every word, as in the first quotation 
 on p. 32, and so to make paragraphs all emphasis, 
 grows wearisome. 
 
 Again, such a sentence as this, ' Multiradial 
 apocentricities lie at the root of many of the 
 phenomena that have been grouped under the 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 3S 
 
 designation of Convergence ' was quoted in Nature 
 witli the just comment that the first clause merely 
 repeats the idea of the second in a more cumbrous 
 form. So it is also with this sentence, ' The 
 process of parakeratosis is an irregular cornifica- 
 tion.' Scientific writers are too apt to suppose that 
 restatement in bigger words is explanation. 
 
 Yet I would be no purist in language ; language 
 is no doubt a living thing in its way, and too 
 often it is the cultured class which would arrest 
 its growth. I would not resent the invasion even i 
 of slang; at worst it saves us from the too 
 abstract (p. 134). Some slang words make their 
 way generation by generation into our tongue, 
 and increase its wealth; but we must not use 
 a new word until we are satisfied that no word 
 better, or as good, exists in the language ; for 
 generally the lack lies not in the language but in 
 the resources of the innovator. However, a century 
 ago ' mob,' ' sham,' ' banter ' were slang. ' Crest- 
 fallen ' in the days of cock-fighters was slang ; and 
 ' handicap ' we meet now far away from the race- 
 course. ' Discard ' and ' pell-mell,' which had a like 
 origin, have been good English for three centuries ; 
 and from cards ' to go one better ' is now coming 
 in. The word ' fad ' and its congeners are useful 
 novelties, because ' crotchet,' ' craze,' or ' hobby ' 
 scarcely express the same meaning. ' Blufi" now 
 moves in the highest circles. 'Fluke' is certainly 
 a gain to us, and I see (O.D.) that Mr. Bain has 
 used it. ' Byke ' is no ' uglier ' to me than ' like ' 
 or ' strike,' nor more uncouth than ' squad ' ; a new 
 
36 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES ohap. 
 
 word was wanted for a new thing, and the h sound 
 is not only the original sound but also spares us an 
 increase of the ea;cessive hisses of the English tongue. 
 ' Scientist ' seems to me as proper a word as ' artist,' 
 and a better word than, say, ' orientalist.' To ' shunt ' 
 is not quite represented by any older verb; and 
 ' boycott ' we could ill spare. ' To endorse,' ' to 
 discount,' and ' to take stock,' although they come 
 of the children of Mammon, are serviceable. I 
 see no more objection to ' Bartlemy's,' or even to 
 ' Bart's,' than I do to ' Bedlam ' or ' Maudlin.' 
 'Employee,' when the idle accent has dropped off, 
 will be as good as ' trustee ' or ' committee.' 
 
 Slang or exotic phrase, then, is mischievous when 
 it leads to the neglect or degradation of something 
 richer or choicer. Before we pick up smart words 
 or exotic words, we are to see that we have none 
 better in our possession. For instance ; ' role ' is 
 inferior to ' part,' for ' role ' takes us back to a dried 
 sheepskin, whereas to play a part is to be engaged 
 in the drama itself: 'part' is a pfjiia 7rpdy/j,aT0';. 
 ' Summary ' is at least as good as ' r^sum^ ' ; and 
 ' dernier ressort ' has no advantage over ' last resort.' 
 ' Eaison d'etre,' ' tout ensemble,' ' cortege,' ' par ex- 
 cellence,' etc., etc., give us nothing that we have not 
 of our own. ' Taboo ' is generally used incorrectly, 
 and in this common use is no better than ' ban.' 
 There is no virtue in the barbarous ' cavitation ' 
 which is not in the civiller word ' excavation.' To 
 ' exteriorise ' is no better than ' utter ' ; nor ' centri- 
 fugalisation ' than ' spinning.' ' Standardisation ' is 
 a grievous vocable ; I fear we are in for it, but let 
 
I INTEODUCTOEY 37 
 
 it serve as a warning ! ' Plucky ' is a meaner word 
 than 'bold,' 'daring,' or 'staunch'; and is unnecessary. 
 Hospital slang must be regarded with particular 
 suspicion ; such e.g. as ' back pressure ' in cardiac 
 disease (for 'high pressure' — the pressure of fluids 
 being equal in all directions, iu health and disease) ; 
 ' the operation had no return ' ; ' give him some- 
 thing to make his heart compensate properly,' and 
 so on. In describing the diagnosis of obscure mental 
 disease it is unseemly to write of the patient that 
 ' you try all you know to make him give himself 
 away ' ; for on paper at any rate it looks a little 
 heartless as well as vulgar. 'Potatoes were for- 
 bidden ' is as easy to write as ' potatoes were 
 knocked off,' etc., etc. It is remarkable, indeed, 
 how little hospital slang has contributed to the 
 life, precision, or lucidity of medical discourses. It 
 seems to be bred not of nature and spontaneity, but 
 of gregarious shallowness and dowdiness, and to be 
 as faulty in significance as in fashion it is vapid 
 and slipshod. 
 
 The recall of obsolescent words is a delicate 
 matter. Custom is our chief guide in language, 
 no doubt; but whose custom? — the custom of the 
 illiterate, the custom of the pedant, the custom of 
 the educated man of the world, the custom of the 
 poet, the custom of the elegant essayist? Words 
 which to the illiterate are obsolescent, to the cul- 
 tivated writer are familiar enough. For instance, 
 to the journalist the word ' opinion ' is almost 
 obsolete ; he abases the word ' theory ' to take its 
 place. An antiquary, as he tells us, has a ' theory ' 
 
38 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 that a certain coin is of Constantine ; in the next 
 paragraph he himself has a ' theory ' that a burglar 
 climbed over the garden wall and let himself in by 
 the cellar window ; in the next a ' theory ' that the 
 leader of the opposite political party talks nonsense ; 
 and so on {vide p. 93). We, who shrink from 
 pedantry, scarcely venture nowadays to speak of 
 ' opinions ' or ' notions,' or to keep ' theory ' for 
 higher uses. Words, then, are wasted, blurred, 
 abused, or lost : but at what point does a word die ? 
 at what stage of its neglect or evanescence have we 
 to reconcile ourselves to its loss ? Generation after 
 generation men of letters have extended the range 
 and the riches of our tongue, and have conferred 
 precision and distinction upon the words of it : are 
 we to relinquish many of these, significant as they 
 may be, because the man in the street has forgotten 
 them ? or many meanings of them because the coarser 
 and shallower notions of the many have no need of 
 their refinements ? Nay, shall we not try stealthily 
 to restore to life some inanimate words which cannot 
 well be spared ? 
 
 Multa renaaoentur quae jam cecidere, oadentque 
 Quae nunc sunt in honore voeabula. 
 
 Hor. Ars P. 71. 
 
 In this matter much must be left to the tact of 
 the writer ; but let us all have a care to see our 
 thoughts and things clearly, definitely, and as it were 
 objectively, as an artist sees the lines and values of 
 natural objects ; and to furnish our memory with 
 all and any words and means of expression which 
 may represent them intimately and vigorously. 
 
I INTEODUCTOKY 39 
 
 Surely none of us has a more intimate sense of the 
 finer edges and sinuosities of nature than the student 
 of natural science, yet in the sense of balance, of 
 renunciation, of relative values, he often fails. 
 Nevertheless, in the chemistry of nature, as in 
 other spheres, it is true that 
 
 The little more, and how much it is ! 
 And the little less, and what worlds away ! 
 
 In conclusion, let us remember that the function 
 of concise and lucid prose is not only a function of 
 a writer and a reader, full and just as this immediate 
 relation may be ; it is by the sum of these intimate 
 relations that truths of thought and idea are broadly 
 established. Yet how is truth to be broadly 
 built if the several conversations of writers and 
 readers be vague, or shallow, or crooked, or fastidious, 
 or insincere ? Vivacity, curiosity, versatility, adroit- 
 ness may be well enough, or they may be as the crack- 
 ling of thorns. Let us admire the hand of Time 
 which, dissipating the vain and perverted in culture, 
 disengages and purifies its deeper and sincerer 
 elements : when Time is on its side work becomes 
 classical ; if " quod ubique quod ad omnibus " be 
 fallacious for the day, for Time it is sure. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 ON COMPOSITION 
 
 The Greek and medieval schools did us priceless 
 service in creating strong, flexible, and fitting words 
 and phrases for the expression of general ideas, of 
 definite propositions, and of subtle distinctions. For 
 the verification of premises the elder Greeks had 
 not time to do much, and the younger Greek and 
 the medieval schools had a different task to perform ; 
 namely, to block out the schemes of larger and more 
 stable societies.' Heresy was damnable because it 
 mined the foundations on which a greater society was 
 to be built ; so the unquenchable faculties of analysis 
 were to be turned; not upon the foundation, but upon 
 the superstructure of Christendom. Thus every 
 feature of logic and language was wrought, fretted, 
 and chiselled into fantasy; but thus the tools were 
 perfected, and the craft was learned. To-day, in 
 his new heat for digging and exploring foundations, 
 the laboratorian is forgetting this art by which his 
 new ideas, when they come, are to be constructed 
 and signified ; to quote Lady Welby again, he is 
 forgetting that " language is the most precious of the 
 tools of humanity.'' By the experimental method he 
 
 40 
 
CHAP. II ON COMPOSITION 41 
 
 has won a world of facts, no doubt, but he is slow to 
 perceive that, without sure reason, facts are dross ; 
 and that, if he has not lost the fine instrument of 
 reason which his fathers had made for him, he has 
 allowed it to rust {vide pp. 93-106). So subtle 
 argument he resents as pettifogging ; as if the subtlest 
 reason were any match for the infinite elusiveness of 
 nature ! Pedantry, as I have said, consists not in 
 subtlety, nor even in a show of subtlety without its 
 substance ; at its emptiest this chiselling of language 
 into its finest lines is useful as a multiplication and 
 explication of its resources; pedantry consists in 
 the use of a plastic and various medium, without 
 a sense of relative values. To write ' Heremites ' 
 or ' Vergil,' or ' the trauma is now healed,' is pedantic 
 because the sense of values is lost. Grammar is not 
 pedantry ; mathematics is not pedantry ; military 
 manoeuvres are not pedantry ; but pedantry it is to 
 take grammar for literature, mathematics for physics, 
 or manoeuvres for war. So, that dialectic is neither 
 knowledge nor common sense, none knew better than 
 Plato ; none knew better than he that literary form 
 is not itself literature : but Plato knew that through 
 form and dialectic lies the way not to materials, 
 but to build materials into knowledge and beauty. 
 In the followers of Flaubert or Stevenson, for 
 example, who work for form without stuff, nay, even 
 in Flaubert himself, as his matter failed and manner 
 predominated, literature is not ; on the other hand, 
 many a modern scientific treatise contains but 
 undressed materials of knowledge. Stuff is better 
 than style, yet bricks and mortar are not a house. 
 
42 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 To talk of Newman's marvellous ' style/ as to talk 
 of ' incomparable Janes/ has become a commonplace 
 of ' culture ' ; and in Newman we may admire the 
 crafty use of subtleties of meaning and distinction 
 which he had learned by conversation with medieval 
 schools of thought : but for him who has read 
 Newman thoughtfully, his symmetry and subtlety 
 are diminished by the defective illumination of his 
 mind, which was as that of the moon, shining on one 
 side, on the other dark for ever. We may well try 
 to imitate the suppleness and sinewy articulation of 
 Newman's argument ; but we must try also to adapt 
 and develop it for the far larger purport of the 
 modern knowledge and thought of which Newman 
 was ignorant and even unwitting. 
 
 The short notes on composition, which I propose 
 now to give, have no pretensions to unity or com- 
 pletion, nor even to system ; they are no more than 
 occasional counsels and criticisms, such as my 
 perusal of academic essays has suggested to me. 
 In them certain faults prevail, and certain defects 
 are generally conspicuous ; to these I shall confine 
 myself. They fall conveniently under such heads 
 as grammar ; order of periods, sentences, and words ; 
 misuse of words ; emphasis ; tautology ; metaphor ; 
 stops ; and into some minor sections. 
 
 Grammar. — English grammar is simple, and its 
 rules are few ; but, were it otherwise, I could not 
 occupy myself with elementary education. Against 
 some current faults, however, even in grammar, the 
 student must be admonished. 
 
 Misuse of relative p7vnouns is still too frequent 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 43 
 
 to be excused. The pronouns, says M. Breal, are 
 the most mobile things in language — " ils voyagent 
 perpetuellement." Here is an example from a recent 
 thesis : 
 
 Re said to his patient that if he did not feel better, he 
 thought he had better return to say how he was. 
 
 This is an unusually fine specimen, no doubt ; but 
 minor ambiguities of the kind are abundant. A 
 well-known critic writes : 
 
 Even Shakespeare's imagination was not fired by Augustus, 
 and his Julius was inclined to rant and only inspired him to 
 great verse after he was murdered. 
 
 A celebrated passage of Jeremy Taylor is marred by 
 a fallacious pronoun : 
 
 Where our kings have been crowned their ancestors lie 
 interred, and they (ancestors ?) must walk over tlieir grand- 
 sire's head to take his crown. 
 
 He is a bold man who tampers with the great 
 Bishop of Down, but would not the sentence have 
 run even more finely had it opened — 'Where their 
 ancestors lie interred, our kings have been crowned,' 
 etc., etc. ? Perhaps the most frequent of these 
 ambiguities is the occurrence of ' it ' after two or 
 three antecedents, the reference, likely enough, being 
 not to the last of them. This sentence is taken 
 from a considerable author and good scholar : 
 
 Show the governing faculty of reason a contradiction, 
 and it will renounce it (renounce what ?) ; but till you have 
 shown it, blame rather yourself than him who is unconvinced. 
 
44 SCIENTIFIC PAPEKS chap. 
 
 Here the first ' it ' seems to stand for ' reason ' 
 (though related to ' contradiction ') ; the second ' it ' 
 must mean a proposition of the unconvinced person ; 
 the third ' it ' refers, no doubt, to ' contradiction.' 
 
 On the revision of a manuscript, pause at every 
 such pronoun till you are sure that its particular 
 antecedent is unmistakable. Eemember the well- 
 known example : 
 
 No one yet had demonstrated the structure of the human 
 kidneys, Vesalius having examined them only in dogs. 
 
 (Human kidneys in dogs !) 
 
 The following example of the vague pronoun 
 cannot be cited as a grammatical error : 
 
 Then A. B. came up, and said he wanted to talk to C. D. 
 about a certain matter which he might like to know. 
 
 (This sentence is from the pen of a master of prose, 
 who might defend it ; the former ' he ' duly refers, 
 no doubt, to its antecedent A. B., and the second 
 duly to its antecedent C. D. : still the construction 
 is far from lucid.) 
 
 False nominative relations are not confined to 
 pronouns ; e.g. 
 
 Of all diseases none are (is) more difficult than the study of 
 appendicitis. 
 
 Here study becomes a disease. 
 
 The neutral or indefinite pronoun ' one ' should 
 be used sparingly in English ; ' one says,' ' one 
 does ' are good French or good German, but, if used 
 indifferently, are not good English. I say " if used 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 45 
 
 indifferently," because there are occasions when 
 the indefinite pronoun has its point, as in this 
 borrowed example : ' One may well be afraid when 
 the lions roar ' ; here, while the concrete and personal 
 element of fear is retained (which ' a lion's roar is 
 fearful ' does not retain), cowardice is considerately 
 distributed. But in 'One opens a vein at once,' 
 there is no such gain ; write ' A vein must be 
 opened ' ; or, if a personal opinion be appropriate, 
 ' I open a vein at once.' The use of ' you ' and 
 ' yours ' as indefinite pronouns is generally vulgar, 
 and not rarely unpleasant; e.g. when a student 
 reads to me, ' You may then get secondary deposits 
 of cancer in your liver,' I resent the suggestion. 
 To write ' In Graves' disease you get a iine tremor 
 of your hands ' ; or ' You cannot rush your patient 
 straight into a diabetic diet, as they cannot stand it,' 
 is as vulgar as Bottom's ' I could munch your good 
 dry oats ' without his humour. Yet for particular 
 effects even this use may be kept in reserve; for 
 instance, in ' Your worm is your only emperor for 
 diet ' the poet purposely conveys a touch of kin. 
 
 The following sentence, culled two or three years 
 ago from one of our theses, is, I admit, a ' record ' 
 example : 
 
 Then I should advise putting your feet into hot water, 
 when he will feel a gentle perspiration breaking out, and 
 next morning one will feel the cold passing oflF. 
 
 Even in more careful writers the pronoun ' one ' is 
 sometimes followed later in the sentence or para- 
 graph by ' we,' ' your,' etc. 
 
46 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 I note that an indirect construction is often used 
 to avoid the little word '/' {vide p. 56). It would 
 seem that an impression is abroad among the writers 
 of academic essays that the first person is indecent. 
 No doubt, as in our manners generally, self must be 
 intruded with tact ; we must intrude, that is, just 
 so much of one's self as the reader is attuned to, 
 and no more. Authors such as Montaigne, or 
 Lamb, or even Pepys, can attune their readers to 
 a long and intimate personal converse which in 
 authors of smaller gifts would be tiresome or 
 offensive. In lyric poetry the self of the poet is 
 of its essence ; if the poet's self is uninteresting his 
 poem expires. The knowing persons who write the 
 news and gossip of the town for certain journals 
 give us a little more of the complacent ' I ' than, 
 let us say, a Greek sense of the to Trpeirov would 
 approve ; but of the reader of a thesis, or other 
 such paper, it is expected that he speak in due 
 measure of himself — of his own work and his own 
 opinions ; and persistently to evade the first person 
 singular is in him affectation. Egoism may lurk 
 even in impersonality. 
 
 The hanging participle. — A participial clause is 
 often concise and effective, as in this, ' What woman, 
 having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece,' 
 etc. ; but it is a very common fault to leave a par- 
 ticiple ' hanging ' ; that is, without a subject : e.g. 
 ' Referring to your letter of yesterday Mr. Jones has 
 seen the applicant,' etc. To whom does ' referring ' 
 apply ? — to Mr. Jones or to nobody ? Again, ' My 
 thesis was half written, having consulted Professor 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 47 
 
 Wilkinson as to the subject.' Did the thesis 
 consult the Professor ? ' Complaining of shortness 
 of breath the nurse lifted her into bed' (i.e. the 
 nurse complained ?). So in these again, ' Looking 
 back on the affair the mistake seems to have been,' 
 etc. ; or, ' Preaching in chapel an old woman said 
 to him ' (which of them was preaching ?). ' These 
 I have, having bought them,' etc., is correct ; but 
 ' These are in my possession, having bought them ' 
 is incorrect. In 'The bullet indented the coin, 
 thus saving his life,' ' saving ' duly follows the 
 antecedent ' coin ' ; but the hanging participle may 
 seem to refer to the bullet, so that we have, as the 
 French say, the construction louche (squinting con- 
 struction). Thus, again, ' Without translating, gentle- 
 men must not talk Latin, nor smoke, nor swear, in 
 the presence of ladies ' for — In the presence of ladies 
 gentlemen must not talk Latin without translating, 
 nor smoke, nor swear. ' This had no effect on the old 
 hospital remaining free from disease ' is as perverse 
 a use of the present participle as it is bewildering 
 as a proposition. When the participle changes the 
 tense of the sentence there is a double error or 
 ambiguity ; e.g. ' All attempts at cure, such as 
 killing the parasite in the lungs, were in vain.' 
 I have chosen a dubious instance, as ' killing ' may 
 be called a noun substantive ; yet the construction 
 is awkward, and such elliptical phrases used without 
 vigilance are apt to lead to louche constructions. 
 The following : ' I discussed a series of cases 
 occurring (which occurred) in this hospital ' ; ' Mr. 
 Eobinson was twice married, his first wife dying 
 
48 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS ohap, 
 
 in 18 — he married again,' etc. ; 'He ran up the 
 hill, and arriving at the top (as he arrived) fainted'; 
 ' I intend doing ' (to do) ; ' to which I propose 
 alluding ' (to allude) ; ' we are contemplating 
 walking back,' etc., etc., are inadmissible. When 
 a participle is used absolutely in English the case 
 is the nominative ; e.g. we do not say ' him only ex- 
 cepted,' but ' he only.' But it is not for frequent use. 
 
 The double passive is a clumsy mode of speech, 
 and in many cases hazy in meaning. Why do we 
 say ' it has ceased to be maintained ' (for ' it is 
 maintained no longer ') ; ' were considered to be 
 produced by ' (for ' were attributed to ') ; ' the spleen 
 was unable to be felt,' or ' it may not be able to be 
 made out ' ; 'a frothy fluid would be able to be 
 squeezed out'; 'the box was not allowed to 
 be opened ' ; 'no doubt it will be able to be got 
 rid of — the endeavour to grasp the notion of 
 this last sentence turns one almost giddy. In an 
 article before me I read ' It ought to be insisted 
 upon that cretins are educated ' (the writer meant 
 the contrary, viz. that they are not educated, and 
 that their education should be insisted upon). 
 
 Transitive and intransitive verhs : e.g. ' The 
 patient quiets down.' — There is no authority 
 worth mentioning for this use of the verb ; nor 
 is it needed. Transitive verbs in the passive 
 become intransitive ; e.g. in ' I will bleed him ' 
 the verb is transitive ; in 'he was bled ' it is not 
 transitive, nor can it be made so. Even in the 
 active some verbs, as ' to give,' become transitive 
 only by means of the preposition ' to ' : e.g. ' I will 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 49 
 
 give to him ' ; but to write ' The patient was given 
 a rhubarb pill ' is bad ; and gratuitously bad, for 
 we can say as readily that ' a rhubarb pill was 
 given to him.' For ' The remedy should be given 
 a thorough trial ' read ' should be well tried.' The 
 following are common instances of a like solecism : 
 ' I will write you to-morrow.' ' Her Majesty was 
 pointed out the site of the memorial.' ' We were 
 shown the insect under ' a lens.' ' In the photo- 
 graph the eruption does not show.' 
 
 Past Tenses and Perfect Participles. — Of some verbs 
 the past tenses and perfect participles are often 
 confused : e.g. ' The bone was broke ' (broken). ' I 
 had scarcely began when he begun ' (a double error). 
 ' He drunk (drank) the mixture.' ' The rags must be 
 burnt ' (burned). ' I learned (learnt) by experience.' 
 
 The Subjunctive mood is falling into disuse ; but 
 is still effective for grave or emphatic doubt. ' If,' 
 however, often means ' seeing that,' when no doubt is 
 assumed, and the subjunctive would be incorrect. 
 
 False Concords. — These are relatively few, but they 
 happen occasionally : e.g. ' The shame and pain to 
 which his failv/re expose him.' 'Nothing but his 
 poverty, modesty, and diffidence prevent' (pre- 
 vents). ' The ideas he had gained was his chief 
 concern.' In a certain fine passage we read 
 'Their instrument was the human heart, their 
 harmonies those of the human affections ' (insert 
 were after 'harmonies'). 'The professor with his 
 friend and his pupil were ' (was). ■ ' Man after 
 man were (was) caught in the ambush.' ' The 
 severity of the symptoms were such,' etc. ' Policy 
 
 E 
 
f)0 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 as well as fashion dictate ' (dictates). ' Gout as well 
 as glycosuria were (was) present.' 'Neither the 
 one nor the other were (was) there.' ' The outline 
 of the breastbone is altered, as are also some of the 
 ribs ' (for ' as is also that of some of the ribs '). 
 Even in careful writing a false concord will creep in 
 furtively sometimes; as e.g. 'My intentions were 
 good, but my perseverance faulty ' (my perseverance 
 were). ' His gait is reeling and his steps (are) irregular.' 
 ' The outline was blurred and the details (were) in- 
 distinct.' Or again, ' The complexion is pallid, the 
 forehead wrinkled, the nose depressed, and the lips 
 thick and everted ' ; here ' and ' should be trans- 
 ferred to the previous clause, a semicolon put after 
 ' depressed,' and «?-« inserted between ' lips ' and 
 ' thick.' 
 
 I will accumulate examples here of other false 
 concords, as these minor errors are frequent : 
 ' neither of these boys were (was) remarkable,' etc. 
 'Nobody ever put so much of themselves into their 
 work.' ' Of these persons none (no one) were (was) 
 robust.' 'Now none of these things ivere (was) 
 there.' How far more effective is the singular verb 
 after ' none ' ! 
 
 Some correct writers put a plural verb after a 
 singular noun which, by the qualification of two or 
 more kinds of adjective, is put to mean various 
 things : e.g. ' Vocal and instrumental music are 
 provided.' Conversely, a singular verb may be 
 defended if governed by two nominatives so closely 
 related as to be one : e.g. ' Praise and glory 
 surrounds his throne,' by which artifice praise and 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 51 
 
 glory become essentially united. So also ' Eegres- 
 sion and progression exists when we breed from 
 variants,' is defensible and effective ; as thus the 
 intimacy of the two aspects of change is signified. 
 
 A relative pronoun may determine the number 
 of the verb : e.g. ' One of the most valuable hooks 
 that have appeared ' is correct, for ' that ' relates to 
 ' books,' not to ' one.' ' This was one of the first 
 objects that were found ' is correct likewise. ' I 
 am one of those who are unable to refuse my 
 assent ' is correct as to are ; but consequently 
 ' my ' should have been omitted. 
 
 Tenses are not to be changed in the same sense: 
 e.g. ' The leaves were dry and brown, and under the 
 microscope there is seen,' etc. 
 
 Whose — is conveniently and quite correctly 
 applied to things as well as to persons. 
 
 Cases. — Errors in cases are few and venial ; but 
 I find in a thesis before me, ' The patient did not 
 know who to speak to.' Such phrases as ' Do you 
 mind me seeing them ' ; and ' I heard of liim (his) 
 running away' are not to be excused, even in 
 speech. 
 
 Than as a conjunction does not govern a case. 
 ' I know you are wiser than me ' should be ' than I ' 
 (am). Avoid such an uncomfortable ambiguity as 
 this, ' Antony was not less desirous of destroying 
 the conspirators than his officers.' 
 
 The ' and which ' and ' and who ' blunders are 
 by no means yet extinct : e.g. ' These scenes painful 
 to witness, and which did no good ' ; where ' and,' 
 of course, is intrusive : omit it, or write ' Scenes 
 
52 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 which were painful to witness and were,' etc. 
 Again : ' A man working in the field, and who ran 
 forward,' etc. The ' whom blunder' may be mentioned 
 here : ' The two persons whom he thought were 
 far away.' ' Mr. Jones whom I trusted would have 
 helped me ' (in both instances read who). 
 
 That. — Keep down your ' thats ' ; for they 
 multiply like lower organisms : e.g. ' He told me 
 that he told you that you were to see that all was 
 in order,' etc. ; ' I cannot suppose {that) you mean 
 that the dog saw the rabbit and (that he) ran away 
 from it.' ' That ' is often improperly intruded : e.g. 
 'Whether the one had expanded, or (that) the other 
 had shrunk,' etc. (' To ' is likewise very prolific.) 
 
 'This' and 'That.' — When two subjects are 
 mentioned this refers to the latter and that to the 
 former, a good and efficient rule often transgressed : 
 e.g. we write correctly ' The patient suffered from 
 nephritis and pleurisy ; that the physician observed, 
 this he overlooked.' ' After writing the life of X. 
 the author undertook a history of the period ; the 
 first volume of that (this) history has now, appeared.' 
 By the pronoun ' that '_ the reader, to his confusion, 
 is referred to the life of X. When but one subject 
 precedes the pronoun, this is to be preferred : 
 e.g. ' Moreover he was accused of partiality, this he 
 denied.' Not uncommonly a paragraph begins with 
 a vague ' This ' : e.g. ' This being so,' etc., etc., where 
 ' this ' may indicate any one of several antecedents or 
 the sum of them, without definite distinction. 
 
 Do not insert how after when : e.g. ' When it is 
 considered (how) that,' etc. 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 53 
 
 Beware of the intrusive not : e.g. ' I ran to see 
 if I could (not) get a seat.' ' Let us see if we can 
 (not) help him.' ' I cannot say what disease she 
 may (not) have.' ' Mr. Jones asked if both lungs 
 might (not) be diseased.' 'We should consider 
 whether this may (not) be a case of infection.' 
 A recent gazette contained an inquiry whether a 
 certain title might (not) be conferred. On the 
 other hand, ' not ' is often in error omitted : e.g. ' He 
 depended on me no more than he could help' is, 
 strictly speaking, nonsense; if this form is to be 
 used, not is required before ' help.' ' I doubt 
 whether the reverse be not the case ' is a common 
 and bad form for, ' I suspect the contrary to be true.' 
 Genitive. — Ought we to write ' I heard it in a 
 speech of Mr. Gladstone's (or of Mr. Gladstone) ' ? 
 is a question often asked of me. ' Gladstone's ' 
 may be regarded as an inflexional genitive — as we 
 say 'in an undertaking of his' (not of him); if 
 this be the notion I should discard the 's after ' of ' 
 as obsolescent. But the case is scarcely covered 
 thus : after ' Gladstone's ' some following noun 
 might be understood, and such is often the in- 
 tention; e.g. if in a context on editions of Homer 
 we read ' This gloss we discovered in a note of Mr. 
 Gladstone's,' we might take ' edition of Homer ' as 
 understood after ' Gladstone's.' 
 
 Whether in the genitive of a noun ending in s 
 {e.g. Socrates) we should write Socrateses, Socrates's, 
 or Socrates', is not a. matter of grammar but of 
 custom, and the last is the most convenient. 
 Usually, however, as also in the plural of such 
 
54 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 nouns, we avoid these hisses by a periphrasis : e.g. 
 ' in the opinion of Socrates.' ' Would there were 
 more Socrateses in the world ' is very ugly. 
 
 A common grammatical error is the forcing of 
 an alien preposition upon a verb : e.g. ' of which 
 he had heard but never seen' {see7i of/); 'This 
 addition can be applied and connected with the 
 instrument ' (applied with !). Or by the omission 
 of a necessary preposition the meaning may be 
 vitiated : e.g. ' Much depends on the home and the 
 care bestowed upon them.' Here on must be 
 repeated before ' the care,' as the home is not 
 bestowed upon them. 
 
 Singular and Plural Nouns. — Whether Greek 
 be ' compulsory ' or not, Latin cannot well be 
 omitted from a good education ; yet when in theses 
 before me I read not only prodromate (for pro- 
 dromon — pi. prodroma) passim, and not rarely also 
 ' a phenomena,' and so forth, ignorance of Greek is 
 scarcely an excuse. But what are we to say when 
 not long ago a well-known physician wrote of 
 • vocal fremiti ! ' In editorial paragraphs of smart 
 newspapers I have lately read of ' omnibi,' and even 
 of ' non possumi ' ; in a well-known book by a cele- 
 brated author we are told that ' the hands of the 
 Scipii were nailed to the rostrte ' — blunders which 
 remind us of Frank Lockwood's jest, ' They will 
 apply for a mandamus ! Then we will apply for a 
 brace of mandami.' 
 
 Some plural nouns condense into a singular : 
 e.g. a barracks ; a means (of attainment) ; a works 
 (of a factory). 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 55 
 
 The purport of a sentence is often obscured by 
 a neglect of the generic singular and plural. This 
 sentence I find in a recent thesis : 
 
 We detected a copious growth of streptococci and of 
 bacilli coli communes. 
 
 Here what may be scorned as a ' small criticism ' 
 is one of much importance. ' BacilK coli com- 
 munes ' means, no doubt, many individuals of this 
 one species ; has ' streptococci ' the same meaning, 
 or is the plural a generic plural signifying more 
 than one species ? From the context I cannot tell : 
 I waste some time, and am still in the dark ; but 
 probably the sentence should have run 'strepto- 
 cocci and bacHlMS coli communis,' bacillus coli 
 communis being singular as to species, and cocci 
 plural as to species. ' The growth showed affinities 
 to the carcinomata' is correct, for the writer 
 meant to a group of several kinds ; but to say that 
 ' secondary carcinomate were scattered in nodular 
 masses through the liver ' is wrong ; as the nodules 
 were presumably of one kind, and the name of the 
 kind should have been ia the singular: so again, 
 in ' The operative treatment of uterine myomata ' 
 we should read myoma. On page 88, in the phrase 
 ■ exuberance of adjective,' I deleted the plural 
 ' adjectives,' which at first I had written. 
 
 It is pedantic to use Oreeh and Latin plurals of 
 words taken into common use ; the rule is to 
 confine these declensions to technical terms : e.g. 
 ' asyla ' for ' asylums ' would be pedantic. We 
 rarely make any technical gain in writiiig sequela 
 
56 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 rather than sequel ; and to write ' There were no 
 complications nor sequelce ' is piebald work. 
 
 Before leaving grammar I may inquire why 
 scientific essayists generally go out of their way to 
 an indirect construction which does but take the life 
 out of their sentences. We read ' there is found a 
 blue coloration,' ' the7-e exists a marked tendency for 
 the parts to unite' (vide p. 123), 'only rarely does 
 one find ' ; ' and to the apathy of the sufferer was 
 added an appearance of exhaustion' — all vapid 
 substitutes for direct assertion, such as ' it turns 
 blue,' ' the parts are very apt to unite,' ' one rarely 
 finds' and so forth. 
 
 The Reporters' Aorist. — In reporting speeches 
 there is a certain arrangement of tenses, as it is 
 customary I cannot call it an error, which, as a 
 mode of expression, seems to me to be faulty. The 
 custom is that the reporter is wont to put the 
 general propositions of the speech into a past tense. 
 Statements of fact, such as ' the speaker said^ are 
 properly of the past tense ; but general propositions, 
 if valid, are valid in the present and future ; to put 
 them in a past tense is to suggest that even the 
 speaker had no faith in their constancy. Let us 
 suppose the speaker to say that he mixed such and 
 such substances in a phial, that he put the phial 
 under certain conditions of temperature, that after a 
 certain lapse of time he added another reagent, and 
 thereupon that he observed a peculiar change in 
 the colour of the liquid ; all this is a statement of 
 what happened on a certain past day, and so is put 
 properly in the perfect tense. If this experiment 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 57 
 
 be repeated, and repeated again, the report of them 
 must still be in the past tense. But the speaker 
 then declares an inference from the past events — (the 
 ' facts,' vide p. 99) — namely, that by this process the 
 presence of a particular alkaloid may be detected ; 
 now this is not a fact, it is a general proposition, 
 true not only of the period of that research but, as 
 the author would urge, of all human time ; then 
 surely the reporter should put this proposition, as 
 all other general propositions in an argument, in 
 the indicative present; otherwise it is ineffectual. 
 The press reporter is so strongly addicted to this 
 mistake that in reports of speeches of my own I 
 failed to convert him to my syntax, and vain fatigues 
 bade me cease. We need but take up the nearest 
 scientific newspaper to find instances : e.g. 
 
 Did alcohol tend to shorten life, and, if so, to what 
 extent did it do so ? 
 
 Or again : 
 
 It would be hard to show that any characteristic pro- 
 perty of protoplasm did not take its share in the funda- 
 mental endowment of life, and loas not part of its final 
 mystery. 
 
 Passing by the equivocal ' final mystery ' — surely 
 the mystery is present, whether to be final or 
 not — the point of the sentence is blunted by the 
 past tense. (For ' did ' read does, and for ' was ' is.) 
 Again : in the report of a certain speech, I note 
 (among other things) that (the speaker) ' found a 
 difficulty in defining the term purpura ' — that ' he 
 had found a certain drug useful ' — that ' he did not 
 
58 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 believe purpura was common in scurvy ' — that ' a 
 certain kind of it was common in children ' — that 
 ' in it there were three degrees of effusion ' — that 
 ' opium was of value for the pain ' — and so forth : 
 here ' found ' and ' had ' are correct — they are past 
 experience — ' was ' (twice) and ' were ' should have 
 been is and are, for by them the writer intended 
 general propositions, presently valid. Another 
 speaker is thus reported : ' If there was such a 
 disease as this, what was its pathology ? ' — but he 
 did not mean to be purely historical ; what he said 
 no doubt was, 'If there is . . . what is,' etc. A 
 little while ago Ehrlich was thus reported : ' Toxins 
 loere unstable substances ' (as if since they had 
 become stable ? ) ; and, more absurdly, ' at present 
 it was impossible to define them chemically.' 
 Again, in another place, ' Keal education was not an 
 affair of the memory only ; the mind ivas a live 
 thing,' etc. But the blunder is rarely so untimely 
 as in the attribution to a prelate at a recent church 
 congress of the words, ' that there was a God 
 above us.' 
 
 The same false sequacity in concords is seen 
 in such phrases as ' I intended to have written ' 
 (for ' I intended to write ') ; ' I should like to have 
 seen him ' (for ' I should have liked to see him ') ; 
 ' It would have been wrong to have refused ' (for 
 ' to refuse ') ; 'I should have deserved to have been 
 dismissed ' (for ' to be dismissed '). 
 
 Order of words and periods. — In the con- 
 struction of English prose we have to consider the 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 59 
 
 order of the chapters, of the paragraphs, of the 
 sentences, of the clauses, and of the words. It is 
 convenient to begin with the larger divisions. 
 
 "With the chapter we have little concern in 
 building essays ; the subject matter of a thesis, in 
 the case of M.B. at any rate, is usually compre- 
 hensible in one chapter. Some larger papers, how- 
 ever, which indeed deserve the name of treatise, 
 are divisible into chapters : for example, functions 
 of the cell may be regarded in their physical, 
 chemical, vital aspects ; and each of these great 
 divisions may properly occupy a chapter of its 
 own : or again, even within these divisions im- 
 portant subdivisions may be on the scale of 
 chapters. The length of the chapters depends 
 upon the quantity and variety of the whole of 
 the material under discussion. 
 
 A chapter consists of sections, visible or invisible, 
 and on the order and content of the sections much 
 of the lucidity even of the chapter depends : a 
 mechanical order is better than none ; an organic 
 order — an order of thought — is better still. An order 
 of thought may be, as I have said before (p. 15), 
 either the order of research or the order of exposi- 
 , tion ; and under ordinary circumstances the latter 
 is to be preferred. From the outset the reader 
 should see clearly what the author is driving at ; 
 and that every particular on the way is shepherded 
 by his intention. Without such a view the reader 
 must return time after time upon his steps to 
 appreciate the proper place and value of each phase 
 and limb of the argument. I am assured that 
 
60 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 even in mathematics tliese qualities of ' style ' are 
 as notable as they are in prose. 
 
 In plotting out the main divisions of the 
 argument then we shall set down the lines of it 
 upon a slip of paper, and let some general view of 
 it appear in the first paragraphs ; thenceforward in 
 more and more detail the facts and notions upon 
 which the main idea is founded may be displayed 
 gradually. Although every division larger than a 
 paragraph is a chapter, yet in many works several 
 sections, shorter than chapters, may be indicated 
 by a blank interval, by indicative words in heavier 
 type, or by indent. In writing of a disease such 
 sectional chapters may follow a division of the 
 subject into causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, 
 and so forth ; but if the thesis deal, let us say, with 
 the pathology of the disease only, then the morbid 
 anatomy, the histology, the morbid processes, the 
 chemistry and so on would occupy the several 
 sectional divisions. 
 
 On turning now to the paragraph, I find in too 
 many papers that this feature has a precarious 
 existence or none. Not infrequently indeed, in 
 page after page, sentences are treated as paragraphs, 
 or the paragraphs, if any there be, not correspond- 
 ing with natural parts of the argument, are frag- 
 ments or hunks of the body of the thesis rather 
 than limbs of it; merely mechanical parcels, like 
 a string of sausages. In a thesis now before me 
 one paragraph deals with operations, simultaneous 
 and successive, in double empyema ; it then goes 
 aside to describe a single empyema of another kind, 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 61 
 
 cured by aspiration only : there, although this last 
 subject is unfinished, to be taken up again later, this 
 paragraph ends : and in another the writer goes back 
 again to operation in double empyema ; and so 
 forth. Now we must bear in mind that a paragraph, 
 unless it be in a summary or emphatic position, 
 is more than a sentence ; it is a group of sentences, 
 one bearing on another, and thus compassing a 
 wider meaning than the sentence ; it has therefore 
 its own subject and unity, though of a scope far 
 narrower than that of the chapter. A careful por- 
 tioning of the matter into paragraphs, all sufficient 
 and various enough to contain the several limbs of 
 the argument, but none too long for the reader to 
 grasp at once, is a great assistance to him ; but 
 thus to isolate mere sentences, and to hop by para- 
 graphs, as it were upon stepping-stones, is almost 
 as fatiguing as it is, on the other hand, to trudge 
 over lengths of stuff without beginning, middle, or 
 end, and without those pauses and recoveries on 
 the way that the slender faculties of man require. 
 Furthermore, if the paragraphs obey the modelling 
 of the thought, the composition gains in the variety 
 which the rise and fall, and the variable parts 
 and periods of the full argument, impart to the 
 mind and the eye. Again, some paragraphs 
 become wearisome by a piling of exception on 
 exception, or of caution upon caution ; a Barme- 
 cidal kind of intellectual feeding, a windy diet of 
 interdictions. 
 
 Here below then we must think in segments, 
 but we shall let the stages of our pilgrimage vary 
 
62 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 with the natural turns and periods of the subject. 
 Yet, after all, if the thought be in no great disorder, 
 the reader may for himself carve out chapters and 
 even paragraphs ; and if we are tired we can stop, if 
 not at the best halts yet where we please. Such is 
 the gentleness of a book that we may cease to take 
 note of it, neglect it, or even at our caprice throw 
 it aside ; and yet again and again it will open its 
 heart to us. Chapter and even paragraph I say 
 we may dispense with ; but the sentence we cannot 
 ignore, for the sentence is the elemental constituent 
 of prose. If he forgets paragraph and chapter the 
 author makes the way less easy for us; but if his 
 sentences are awkward, shapeless, and perplexed, 
 his ore must be very precious if we are to toil 
 on with him. Is there not a certain arrogance 
 in the author who cares little, or not at all, for 
 unseemliness ; who will put us out of step without 
 apology ? 
 
 At school, in the English lesson, if such lesson 
 perchance there be, the scholar is always told to 
 shorten the sentence ; but there is a place for the 
 long sentence as there is for the short one : the 
 short sentence brings up morsels of stuff, or drives 
 some aphorism smartly home ; the long and periodic 
 sentence, which usually comes later, builds up the 
 conception, or parts of the conception, resuming 
 argument upon argument, each in its logical order, in 
 its own best light, and in its proper bearings upon 
 the rest. The teacher of English should not say 
 absolutely that the sentence must be -short, but, as 
 to construct a long one takes more thought and skill 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 63 
 
 than the ordinary schoolboy possesses, it is better 
 for the beginner to keep to brevity. 
 
 For the longer the sentence the more arduous its 
 architecture; a page-long sentence in a German 
 book is usually made up as a bundle of faggots ; 
 few Germans can build a sentence after the manner 
 of Goethe or Heine. I open at hazard at the last 
 sentence of "A Chapter on Ears" in the Essays 
 of Elia, an essay not designed to be imposing in 
 structure ; yet I find this sentence a page long, 
 and succeeding one of fourteen lines. The right 
 rule then is that we shall not attempt the long 
 sentence until the practice of shorter ones has 
 given us some facility in sentence-building; then 
 as we find that each kind has its own place and 
 effect, we shall image the various extents and 
 qualities of our matter in a variety of forms. 
 
 The same considerations may be applied even to 
 diffuseness ; there is a diffuseness which makes 
 for freedom and elegance in writing, by which the 
 matter flows more sweetly into the mind of the 
 reader {vide p. 23). This art of felicitous dilution, 
 of graceful digression, of happy amplification, is the 
 last accomplishment of an author ; but in scientific 
 essays, fortunately for us botchers, this quality is 
 less important, perhaps rarely expedient : authors of 
 scientific papers had better be content with the 
 pruning-hook. 
 
 Grammarians have analysed the sentence very 
 carefully ; and were I to try to speak here as a 
 grammarian I should have to classify clauses not 
 only as simple and compound, a division which 
 
64 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 speaks for itself, but also into ' adversative/ ' con- 
 cessive,' and the like ; all of which, however, as a mere 
 friendly and informal counsellor, I will omit {vide 
 p. 69). Of two technical rules, however, we shall take 
 heed ; namely, that, usually, time clauses come first 
 and place clauses only second to those : e.g. ' At sun- 
 rise I from the tower of the city | the bells began to 
 peal' As in time clauses we include those containing 
 ' then,' ' when,' ' while,' ' often,' ' sometimes,' ' before,' 
 ' after,' ' whenever,' etc., as well as those more fully 
 and directly declaratory of time ; so those of place 
 include clauses with ' here,' ' there,' etc., unless the 
 importance of these parts of speech be quite sub- 
 ordinate, or indeed metaphorical. 
 
 Order of clauses. — Omitting then the technical 
 divisions of sentences and content with the simple 
 and compound forms — or indeed with the compound, 
 for on the simple sentence we need not dwell — of 
 the compound senterice I will note but two kinds, 
 the loose and the periodic. The periodic sentence 
 can end in one manner only, that is, on the com- 
 pletion of its period ; a loose sentence is one which 
 might have ended at an earlier pause. Here is 
 a ' loose sentence ' : 
 
 He was struck down by an attack of brain fever, pro- 
 ducing acute delirium, which lasted at least two months, 
 but from which he completely recovered before the autumn. 
 
 This sentence might have ended at any one of the 
 stops ; there being no implications of later clauses. 
 But if I take this sentence : 
 
 A brain of such imaginative power, bound to a heart so 
 
li ON COMPOSITION 65 
 
 morbidly sensitive, I'uriously seeking peace through in- 
 defatigable work, with the ever-present shadow of blighted 
 affection within and passionate abhorrence of the social 
 misery around — here was a nature perilously near to a 
 crushing collapse — (and so on) — 
 
 this, though a much longer sentence than that 
 quoted before it as 'loose,' could not have ended 
 anjrwhere before its close : it is a ' period.' On 
 the other hand, this celebrated sentence of John 
 Bright is, technically speaking, ' loose ' : 
 
 The Angel of Death is abroad through the land : we may 
 almost hear the beating of his wings. 
 
 It might have ended at the colon ; although by the 
 division the majesty of the image would have been 
 diminished. It is not to be supposed then that a 
 ' loose ' sentence is so far a bad one, or a periodic 
 sentence so far a good one ; a loose sentence is no 
 doubt more easy to write, but mere difficulty makes 
 no standard of composition. Each variety has its 
 virtues, each its perils and faults. If the loose 
 sentence may be formless, motley, or trailing, 
 the periodic sentence may be — and too often is — 
 involved, loaded, or lumbering. The loose sentence 
 is formless when its clauses transgress the order of 
 thought ; it is motley when alien matter is thrown 
 into it ; it is trailing when the extension of it is 
 tedious or inept. To append an unexpected clause, 
 as in a loose sentence we can, may be very effective ; 
 as, e.g. 
 
 It is fair if our friends love us next to themselves, they 
 may not love us better ; men must have no sense who in 
 this case have no suspicion. 
 
 F 
 
66 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 But the following loose sentence, brief as it is, 
 succeeds nevertheless in being formless : 
 
 It is difficult to exaggerate the gravity of the situation, 
 but I will do my best. 
 
 The following sentence was cast loose, but, by 
 reversing the order of the last two clauses, it might 
 have been turned into a period : 
 
 Victory, wealth, authority, happiness, all have departed ; 
 though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. 
 
 No doubt it was cast loose skilfully, to give it a 
 meditative quality. But here are loose sequences 
 which are not so happy : 
 
 Where would Walton have found himself in the 
 
 ecclesiastical world if now alive ? 
 
 The wall gave shelter to a few small birds and to a 
 solitary man that watched them from the bleak wind. 
 
 Here is another recent instance, from the War 
 Office: 
 
 All officers will have to pass an examination for pro- 
 motion to the rank of Commander in certain technical subjects. 
 
 Spare no pains, then, that the parts of your 
 sentences, whether they be loose or periodic, run 
 in logical order : the following example of a loose 
 sentence (from a recent scientific paper) offends 
 logical order throughout: 
 
 This body is with difficulty made to rotate, and sets itself 
 in motion again if it be stopped, and at once does so. 
 
 Now, before we can conceive the difficulty, we want 
 a picture of the action, thus : ' This body is made 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 67 
 
 to rotate — with difficulty : and (but) sets itself in 
 motion again ' — how so, when it is rotating already ? 
 The next clause should intervene, ' if it be stopped, 
 sets itself in motion again ' (when ' again ' would ob- 
 tain its proper place of emphasis) — ' and at once ' ; 
 here seems to be the end ? — no ! ' does so ' comes 
 trailing in ; i.e. in the final place, that of emphasis 
 (p. 126), are two almost idle words : if remain they 
 must, the clause should be transposed — ' and does 
 so at once ' — ' at once ' being now in the place of 
 emphasis it requires. Thus remodelled the sentence 
 runs : 
 
 This body is made to rotate with difficulty ; but if it be 
 stopped it sets itself in motion again, and does so at once. 
 
 In this new order how much more lucid and alive 
 is the statement ! Again, would not this sentence, 
 from a fine critic — ' which is almost tragic in spite 
 of its humour in its intensity ' — run far better thus, 
 — ' which in spite of its humour is in its intensity 
 almost tragic' 
 
 To pass from the formless to the motley sentence 
 — that in which the subject is changed, or contingent 
 matter included : ' Mrs. Potts . . . left the house 
 in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair' is, as the 
 author intended, not only formless but motley; that 
 is, alien matter is introduced into it. Here again 
 is a stock example of lack of unity : ' A piano 
 for sale by a lady about to cross the Channel in an 
 oak case with carved legs ' ; yet is the following, 
 from a thesis before me, much better ? — 'Its 
 breathing was rapid, and its temperature 103°, and 
 
68 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 its mother said it was frightened by a rat.' Unity, 
 then, must be diligently observed in the sentence, as 
 in the paragraph, in the chapter, and indeed in the 
 whole of a work ; without unity the work or its 
 parts, if not disfigured, become disjointed and 
 patchy. In its minor degrees no fault in aca- 
 demic essays is more frequent than incongruity, 
 even in those which in matter or in grammar may 
 be sufficient. 
 
 Of trailing, or lagging, sentences it is needless to 
 give examples ; they may be found at will : suffice 
 it to say that if a sentence is to be cast loose, the 
 successive clauses must not fall off in strength or in 
 meaning, as with sinking clauses the lag is felt much 
 sooner. A conditional clause, therefore, must not be 
 left to the end : e.g. ' This reaction can always be 
 obtained, if the temperature is kept at 20° C (the 
 clauses should have been reversed) ; nor an important 
 modification, as, e.g., 'Eobinson found a diminution 
 of the albumen in the serum, of starving animals ' ; 
 or again, ' Twenty-eight patients were treated with 
 hypodermic injections, of which eight died ' : here 
 the ' trail ' pulls us up unexpectedly, and makes 
 us wonder if they died of the injections ! The 
 explanatory clause should have followed ' patients.' 
 
 I have given some examples of ineffectual, 
 clumsy, and even grotesque composition ; as examples 
 of the point, lucidity, and effect of well-constructed 
 sentences, sentences of which the parts are deftly 
 and logically put together, the emphasis precisely 
 set, and the unity and balance of the periods justly 
 measured, it is convenient at the present time to 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 69 
 
 cite the recent advertisements in the Times of the 
 Encyclopcedia Britannica. For young writers they 
 are good examples, as they are mere business, 
 and concerned with no matters of meditation or 
 fancy ; they are paragraphs of a kind on which 
 city men think it idle to waste their time : 
 yet I do not doubt that the aptness of the lan- 
 guage to the subject, the dexterity of the phrasing, 
 accents, and emphasis, the clearness and method 
 of the arguments, were worth much gold to the 
 advertisers. 
 
 In handbooks you will find rule upon rule to 
 govern you in ordering your sentences, and when 
 you have learned how to order them, you may find 
 a little interest in the rules. The best of them is 
 Ben Jonson's — to make your sentences 'round and 
 clean.' But no one ever learned to play a game by 
 perusal of rules (vide p. 64) : having trained your 
 ear on good prose, turn your sentences this way and 
 that before you pass your revise for press, and fix 
 them in the form which reads best : the rules you 
 can read afterwards. 
 
 In English the periodic sentence moves in large 
 orbits with difficulty, as our tongue has lost the 
 declensions and inflexions which in Greek and Latin 
 keep the reader in close touch with the sense. In 
 English long suspensions cannot be carried forward 
 without the danger of losing this support. The more 
 then the length and complexity of a sentence the 
 more the care that its contents shall be congruous, 
 its order logical, its subordinate clauses in due 
 service to the principal clauses, its terms lucid. 
 
70 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 and its emphases properly distributed ; moreover, 
 its rhythm must accord with its sentiment, and 
 its tones must be sweet. So, even in English, 
 periods of some sweep, if their parts are well dis- 
 tributed, may be highly effective by the pleasure 
 which we receive from just thought, elevation, 
 rhythm, and sound. Examples of this distinction 
 are to be taken more readily in poetry than in 
 prose ; though in balancing tone and accent we 
 must carefully avoid any semblance of blank verse : 
 there is a harmony of prose as there is a harmony 
 of verse ; and the arts must be distinguished. 
 
 Suspension. — In prose, then, for breadth of con- 
 ception, dignity, or impressiveness, the ear and the 
 understanding are willing to be constrained by 
 suspension ; but mere drags, delays, or inversions, 
 without such rewards, they resent : thus it is' that 
 the bootless suspensions of German prose are 
 grievous to us. In the construction of large and 
 effective periods Gibbon's eminence is well known ; 
 but at times even he, like Johnson too reminiscent 
 of Latin, put upon English a little more than our 
 language could carry, or gave too great a stateliness 
 to ordinary paragraphs. 
 
 As then in music so in prose, our suspenses must 
 be resolved happily and effectively, every suspension 
 having its full reward. Thus even short suspensions 
 need for their success a good ear, and a nice order 
 and balance of clauses, increasing successively in 
 weight and logical climax until the acme is at- 
 tained. A suspension may end in a little surprise ; 
 but, like epigram, this salt, to be effective, must be 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 71 
 
 used adroitly and sparingly. In the first of the 
 following sentences we are held in a suspense 
 which is brief indeed, but ill-balanced and bootless : 
 
 Their respective views on political matters would have 
 hindered, we feel sure, their friendship. 
 
 I have on my notes specimens of long sentences 
 built throughout in this uncouth masonry, but it 
 is not necessary to print them. For a second 
 example I have chosen a long sentence, without 
 ornament but so finely and variously constructed 
 that it carries its length easily, and the reader with 
 it ; here every suspense has its full reward. 
 
 And there, too, rises before us a living image of the 
 majestic poet who had come after Phrynichus, the poet who, 
 first of the Hellenes, had built up a stately diction for 
 Tragedy, and also invested it with external grandeur ; the 
 poet who had described the battle of Salamis as he had seen 
 it ; whose .lofty verse had been inspired by the wish to 
 nourish the minds of his fellow-citizens with ennobling ideals, 
 to make them good men and true, worthy of their fathers 
 and their city ; the poet to whom many an Athenian, sick 
 at heart with the decay of patriotism and with the presage 
 of worse to come, looked back, amidst regret for the recent 
 loss of Sophocles and Euripides, as to one who had been not 
 only the creator of the Attic drama, but also in his own 
 person an embodiment of that manly and victorious Athens 
 which was for ever passing away. — Jebb, Classical Greek 
 Poetry, p. 184. 
 
 The third is an instance of the effective use of a 
 short sentence following a long one, whereby an 
 emphasis or contrast may be imparted which the 
 long sentence alone may fail to achieve. In 
 his biography of Bishop Fraser, in a paragraph of 
 
72 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 two octavo pages, Mr. Bryce recalls to us many 
 great prelates before Eraser and with him ; and, 
 as their several features vary and the interest 
 increases, his sentences are various also, carrying 
 more 'and more weight till, after three or four 
 sentences of six or eight lines in length, he con- 
 cludes the paragraph, — ' His career marked a new 
 departure, and set a new example.' Thus in eleven 
 words the idea of the paragraph is happily con- 
 summated, and our attention is refreshed. 
 
 To this instance I will add two ' of surprise ' 
 (p. 70) : — in an ephemeral essay, after some long 
 suspensions, comes this brief sentence : 
 
 A man of thirty, if he be of liberal education, may read 
 even the very newspapers themselves without much hurt. 
 
 And Henry Sidgwick, — after a description of the 
 Homeric banquets : 
 
 Political dinners are very primitive institutions. 
 
 Short suspensions within larger periods are rarely 
 tolerable in English (p. 71, 1. 5). These suspensions 
 are instances of a vulgar mode, but a mode to me 
 very inelegant : ' To improve, as much as possible, 
 the general health,' etc., etc. (these two clauses 
 should change places). ' I wish owners of such 
 MSS. would let me see, and make extracts from, 
 them ' is also clumsy. The clauses, ' He made 
 many sketches of, and gave close attention to, the 
 village churches of the county ' (for, ' He paid close 
 attention to the churches, etc., and made many 
 sketches of them '), are not only in the wrong 
 logical order, for the more general should have 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 73 
 
 preceded the more partitular statement, but also 
 by this suspension an emphasis and an accent are 
 thrown upon the little words ' of ' and ' to ' which 
 they do not merit. Here are three more instances, 
 culled almost as I write : ' They are at liberty to, 
 and are much tempted to, palm off on the public,' 
 etc. ' He was strongly opposed to, and completely 
 disposed of, these objections.' ' There was suspicion 
 of, and some indignation at, his intervention.' The 
 following suspension is less objectionable, but the 
 value of the order does not quite reward us for the 
 arrest of our attention : ' There are few striking 
 events, and few more remarkable coincidences, in 
 history ' — ' in history ' should have followed ' events.' 
 If, for our amusement, we admit Tor 'tis their 
 nature to,' we defend it on the ground that ' to ' 
 intends ' to bark and bite,' and is therefore em- 
 phatic ; but to write ' There were more conditions 
 than he had any knowledge, of {than he knew) is 
 inelegant, for ' ov ' is neither an emphatic nor a 
 pretty ending. The proper ground of objection to 
 ending a sentence with a preposition is that thus, to 
 speak generally, a place of emphasis (p. 126) is 
 occupied by a weak word. In the next sentence, 
 however, the suspension is rewarded by the profound 
 qualification : ' The double myth is explained by the 
 hypothesis of independent, though psychologically 
 similar, origin ' ; its fault is the ugly approxima- 
 tion of ar and or ('lurrorr — igin !') (p. 141). 
 
 Parenthesis. — Of this kind of suspension I will 
 say only, that to use parenthesis effectively a 
 very skilful hand is required. Unless for the 
 
74 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 briefest point of explanation we shall let parenthesis 
 alone.* 
 
 Before quitting suspensions I must make especial 
 reference to that of the Split Infinitive, or the 
 insertion of a word or words between ' to ' and the 
 verb itself : for example, ' Concentration seems to 
 practically alone determine this reaction.' Slipshod 
 or saucy writers say to me, " Why should I not 
 split the infinitive ? " The first and perhaps sufficient 
 answer is that authors who make the best of the 
 language never do it. Search all or any of them, 
 living or dead ; no instance of it will be found. 
 Even writers, such as Carlyle or Euskin, who press 
 the resources of the language to the uttermost, never 
 play this prank ; for instances we must turn to the 
 printed matter of company promoters, auctioneers, 
 news and puff writers, and second-rate novelists. 
 But, if the question be pressed — What reason 
 would careful authors give for this avoidance ? — to 
 this, as to many other such questions, we may be 
 content to reply that those who dwell on the power, 
 profit, and beauty of a language beget in themselves 
 a sense of fitness and harmony by which they judge 
 of usage, and perceive instinctively whether this and 
 that be, or be not, accordant with the genius of a 
 language ; with that development of its virtues 
 which in the long run will make the best of it as 
 an instrument of thought and sentiment. This 
 instinct, as betrayed in fine prose, is as virile and 
 true as it is delicate and elusive. Still we may fairly 
 be pressed to give some closer reasons, and such 
 reasons are not far to seek : generally, as I have 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 75 
 
 said, even short suspensions are not welcome in 
 English ; and in this case by removing the affix we 
 are suspending part of the inflexion of a verb. 
 Now, as the verb is one of the most important words 
 of the sentence, to divorce it from its attendant 
 particle is a " suspension without reward," and 
 therefore tiresome. Thus, besides imparting an air 
 of jauntiness, a split infinitive is rarely or never 
 telling ; usually, indeed, it is harmful to the sense : 
 e.g. the clause quoted above from an essay before 
 me, ' Concentration seems to practically alone de- 
 termine this reaction,' should have run ' In practice 
 concentration alone seems to determine the re- 
 action ' : ' in practice ' comes now, where it should 
 come, in an emphatic place (p. 126), and 'alone' 
 is attached to ' concentration,' where it is wanted. 
 Again, ' The motor area is found to not at any point 
 extend behind the sulcus centralis' — if the ear 
 can tolerate this, is the understanding satisfied ? 
 The writer evidently made for emphasis : then he 
 should have written ' Not at any point is the motor 
 area found to extend,' and so carried the sense and 
 the reader better with him. 'To always sleep 
 with the window open ' conveys the notion of an 
 everlasting sleep — with the window open ; whereas 
 in all probability something less than this was 
 meant. To take a common and simple example : 
 ' To firmly bring the bandage round,' etc. ; this is a 
 bothering way of putting it ; ' firmly ' comes on us 
 before we have formed the notion of what is to 
 be done firmly ; so ' To bring the bandage round 
 firmly ' is more lucid, and ' firmly ' comes, as it 
 
76 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 should, in a place of emphasis. 'To, if possible, 
 obtain ' is open to a like objection ; before we can 
 judge of the possibility we would know what is 
 desired; and so on. 
 
 ' To ' is sometimes omitted from an infinitive 
 with disadvantage : e.g. ' I did not prompt him to 
 praise or disparage the book,' which construction 
 makes disparage seem to be a kind of praise ; 
 before ' disparage,' therefore, to must be inserted. 
 
 ' Try and find,' ' Be sure and come,' are not 
 effective forms, even in gossip. 
 
 Not content with splitting infinitives, slatternly 
 writers are beginning to interpolate matter between 
 the definite article and the noun, thus : ' He gave 
 way to the in all respects objectionable practice of,' 
 etc. ; or again : ' His attitude to the in some 
 quarters prevalent creed.' These suspensions are 
 as ugly in form as they are awkward in sense. 
 ' The commonly affected joints ' may be defended 
 as adjectival, but it has the same kind of clumsi- 
 ness ; ' the joints commonly affected ' runs more 
 fluently and logically. ' So they have everywhere 
 used them' is not only a bad but a confusing order 
 — to what does ' everywhere ' refer ? — ' they ' or 
 ' them ' ? And the growing habit of inserting sus- 
 pended matter between the auxiliary and the verb 
 does not make for elegance, e.g. ' The outlook has, 
 during the last two generations, undergone improve- 
 ment ' (not to mention that it is rather the object 
 than the look-out which is supposed to improve). 
 I have no excuse to make for an eminent school- 
 master who writes ' and he several times takes.' 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 77 
 
 When a certain lady begins a sentence ' We to-day 
 find ' (for ' To-day we find ') we scarcely know 
 whether to resent the blot on a beautiful sentence 
 or to be grateful to her for work so charming that 
 the least of lapses is conspicuous.. Such suspen- 
 sions, unless the reward is great, offend both ear 
 and understanding. 
 
 Chopping sentences. — In evasion of the difficulty 
 of constructing long sentences, and of aptly re- 
 solving suspensions, we may fly to the oppo- 
 site extreme. If we have little to say, and our 
 readers have little to think, we are tempted to be 
 curt, to avoid suspensions altogether, and to en- 
 deavour to make our sentences ' crisp,' as the 
 journalists put it ; that is, jerky and choppy : yet a 
 run of such phrases, by their jolts and stops, are as 
 wearisome to persons capable of sustained thinking 
 as to the childish the longer period or paragraph 
 may be. If for matters of weight the more digni- 
 fied and sustained form of expression is a becoming 
 vesture, and if frivolous matters are to be thrown 
 into the pert and petty phrases they merit, the 
 bulk of interesting prose should be cast in a 
 pleasantly various form. Of the clipped sentence 
 Hazlitt was one of the parents, and, in his pride of 
 parentage carried it, in my opinion, much too far. 
 The following is no unfair example of this too 
 frequent use of his ; forcible no doubt it is, but, 
 after a while, like a tattoo or a cavalry trot, is too 
 bustling and bumping to be pleasant : 
 
 I cannot say that the party at Lamb's were all of one 
 description. There were honorary members, lay brothers. 
 
78 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 Wit and good fellowship was the motto inscribed over the 
 door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, ' Has he 
 written anything 1 ' — we were above that pedantry ; but we 
 wanted to see what he could do. If he could take a hand at 
 pic[uet he was welcome to sit down. If a person liked any- 
 thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient. He would 
 understand by analogy the pungency of other things besides 
 Irish blackguard or Scotcli rappee. A character was good 
 anywhere, in a room or on paper. But we abhorred 
 insipidity, affectation, and fine gentlemen. There was one 
 of our party who never failed to mark ' two for his Nob ' 
 at cribbage, and he was thought no mean person. This was 
 Ned Phillips, and a better fellow in his way breathes not. 
 
 And so on ; reminding ns, and to its disadvantage, 
 of the sailor's log : 
 
 At f past 2 came to the wind, on the larboard tack. 
 Saw 17 ships at anchor; 13 were line -of- battle ships, 
 4 frigates with 2 brigs, and 2 bombs. Immediately made 
 all sail Cleared ship for action, and hove overboard ten 
 bullocks. 
 
 Here we desire the short sentences which are proper 
 to a swift and dashing story, and we get them : in 
 ordinary narrative and in common life we do not 
 care to be hustled along so breathlessly. Modern 
 French authors, not journalists only, are sinners in 
 this fashion; and it would be easy from their 
 volumes to quote page after page of curtal sentences. 
 A scene which swiftly opens to sight and as swiftly 
 vanishes may delight us ; but a rapid succession of 
 fleeting visions, like the glimpses vouchsafed to us 
 as we flash through a long series of railway tunnels, 
 is distressing, e.g. : 
 
 Telles ont iti les impressions d'un vieux Parisien pendant 
 ces trois jours. Elles peuvent Stre fausses. Elles sont sin- 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 79 
 
 cires. C'est ainsi qu'il a vu les choses. Mais cela lie dure 
 pas. Simple Episode. Tout reiitre dans I'ordre. 
 
 And SO on, and so on, for a column of such spasms : 
 yet this is from the pen of one who at other times 
 has proved himself to be among the first of living 
 French authors. 
 
 In essay writing, then, facts and conditions may 
 well be arrayed at first briefly and severally; but 
 as they are marshalled into full argument the 
 periods should be more extended ; though even 
 then a succession of long sentences would be 
 monotonous. We shall not forget that in sentences 
 as well as in paragraphs, variety is pleasing. 
 
 Order of words. — From the ordering of clauses 
 we pass easily to the order of the words in a 
 clause ; the order of words in a clause may be 
 as important as the order of clauses in a sentence. 
 Now the faults of disorder of this kind are easy to 
 note and to correct, if the writer, as he revises his 
 manuscript, will but trouble himself to balance the 
 words : to order a long sentence or a paragraph is, 
 as we have seen, a higher accomplishment; but to 
 make a few words run nicely is no hard task. To 
 refuse this minor care is an ill compliment to the 
 reader, and an ill service to the author him- 
 self, if his matter be worth the writing ; yet, even 
 by good writers, this part of syntax is habitually 
 negle(3ted. 
 
 Let us gather a few examples of verbal disorder : 
 ' The Englishman killed the Frenchman ' has not the 
 same meaning as 'The Frenchman killed the English- 
 man ' ; yet the difference is one of order only. 
 
80 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 ' People ceased to wonder by degrees ' is a lame 
 form for ' By degrees people ceased to wonder.' 
 ' Jones also said ' has not the same meaning as 
 ' Jones said also.' ' Tradition is even silent ' is 
 an error for ' Eyen tradition,' etc. A wrong 
 order may have comical effects, as in these stock 
 examples : ' They followed the party step by step 
 through telescopes.' ' A crammer cannot be pre- 
 vented from continuing to cram by any power on 
 earth.' ' Pord's theatre is for . sale where Mr. 
 Lincoln was assassinated for religious purposes.' 
 'A clever magistrate would see whether he was 
 deliberately lying a great deal better than a stupid 
 jury.' ' His memory ought to be honoured by 
 interment in Westminster Abbey.' ' Erected to 
 the memory of John Phillips accidentally shot as a 
 mark of affection by his brother.' ' The clergyman 
 declares aloud that he believes it a dozen times 
 every year of his life.' ' I understand that when 
 he died Cardinal Mezzofanti spoke at least fifty 
 languages.' Composition as disorderly as this, if 
 not so grotesque as in the cases quoted above, 
 appears continually in our theses, perverting the 
 sense and bewildering the reader. E.g. a candidate 
 read to me, ' I could, when killed, discover nothing 
 abnormal ' — another that ' It is hard to find a 
 resident medical officer except in very large work- 
 houses ' (he did not mean that the larger the 
 workhouse the easier it is to find the physician). 
 ' The changes seem to occur in both practically 
 simultaneously ' (here ' both ' seems to apply to 
 ' practically ' and ' simultaneously ' ; 'in both ' 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 81 
 
 should have opened the sentence. Pugin's son told 
 me that his father said of glass painters : " They say 
 stained glass cannot be made now as fine as it was 
 in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, do they ? 
 I tell you, as fine glass can be made as ever. 
 What they can't do is to put it together." 
 
 Adverbs are often placed badly : e.g. ' Although 
 the thing is quite artistically negligible ' ; here the 
 writer meant not to speak of neglect as a mode of 
 art, but to say that the neglect was not inconsistent 
 with artistic treatment ; so ' artistically ' ought to 
 have followed ' although.' By ' This hat does not 
 apparently belong to me ' do we mean that it does 
 really ? — or ought ' apparently ' to have come first ? 
 ' The report was not unfortunately sent in ' means it 
 was timely ; whereas the writer intended to say the 
 contrary. Again, we read : ' Luckily the monks had 
 given away a couple of dogs, which were returned to 
 them, or the breed would have been lost.' (Of course 
 ' luckily ' should have followed ' which.') ' Only 
 one rat was successfully inoculated ' should be ' was 
 inoculated successfully ' (presumably the inoculation 
 itself was successful in all cases ; it was the results 
 which were unsuccessful). So in the sentence ' It 
 is well known that arsenic is slowly excreted ' the 
 writer did not mean to assert that arsenic is ex- 
 creted, however slowly ; but that the excretion of 
 it is slow. He should have written ' Arsenic is 
 excreted slowly.' Again, in each of the sentences 
 ' The dose is to be gradually increased ' and ' in 
 such a way as to gently draw the lever up ' the 
 adverb should have been placed at the end, as in 
 
 G 
 
82 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 each case the context indicated that the adverb and 
 not the verb was emphatic (vide ' Split Infinitive,' 
 p. 74, and 'Emphasis,' p. 126). 'The first two 
 arrivals' is an incorrect order unless the arrivals 
 are in pairs : otherwise it should run ' The two 
 first,' etc. These little niceties are potent to main- 
 tain the reader's attention : e.g. ' he does not un- 
 happily care,' conveys to him a meaning very different 
 from ' unhappily he does not care.' ' Both ' and 
 ' either ' are often misplaced : e.g. ' He found both 
 traces of sugar and albumin,' where ' both ' is 
 intended to apply not to various traces but to 
 ' sugar and albumin.' Likewise ' neither ' is often 
 misplaced : ' He was neither fitted by abilities nor 
 temperament' (here 'neither' should follow 'fitted'). 
 In ' he was neither disposed to sanction bloodshed 
 nor deceit ' the same correction is needed. ' All 
 not ' very often appears in our theses for ' not all ' ; 
 e.g. ' All men cannot jump a five-barred gate ' 
 would be an absurd order for ' Not all men can ' ; 
 yet I am told that ' All secretions are not 
 arrested by opium,' and that 'AH mosquitoes are 
 not vehicles of infection ' — a different proposition 
 from ' Not all mosquitoes,' etc. ' Well otherwise ' 
 is not equivalent to ' otherwise well,' nor ' not 
 shown to be ' to ' shown not to be.' Few writers 
 think of the proper place of that flighty little 
 word ' only ' ; e.g. ' He only touched the fringe of a 
 large subject' signifies that the fringe was barely 
 handled ; whereas the writer meant ' He touched 
 only the fringe,' etc. ' Only seems to occur ' has 
 a widely different meaning from ' seems to occur 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 83 
 
 only.' In the sentence ' Evidence of excretion 
 only being found in four out of thirteen cases ' the 
 context did not tell me whether only excretion was 
 intended, or it was no more than found, or was found 
 in four only. ' Absorption only commences in the 
 lower intestine ' — then where can it be continued ? 
 ' It caa only health and joy afford ' (for ' It only,' 
 etc.) and ' It can only be eliminated by spare and 
 careful diet ' suggest that in each of these sentences 
 there was something more to be desired. ' Only 
 too frequently he attains his purpose ' and ' This is 
 only what was to be expected' are correct. More- 
 over, ' only' is often inserted detrimentally. In the 
 following sentence, ' Such successes only emphasised 
 his previous failures,' the adverb is rightly placed, 
 but it spoils the sense : his successes did far more 
 than this ; and so again in ' It is only reasonable to 
 suppose,' etc. The use of ' only ' for ' not until ' is 
 not elegant, and tends to ambiguity ; e.g. ' then and 
 only then ' means ' at that time and at no other.' 
 'His hair only turned grey when he was sixty-five' 
 (and at sixty-six was black again ?) ' The breathing 
 only became easy after two days.' ' James only 
 became King of Aragon when his elder brother 
 died,' says a good historian — what more did James 
 hope then to become ? ' He would only see his 
 destination about 8.30 in the evening' — which 
 would be a brief glimpse, poor man. ' The letter was 
 written in 1 803,the essay was only published twenty- 
 three years later ' is surely a very misleading sentence 
 for an eminent writer. 
 
 The rule for placing an adverb is not quite the 
 
84 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 same for active and neuter verbs ; those it usually 
 precedes, these it usually follows : but in particular 
 cases it is often well to subordinate this rule to 
 precision of sense and to emphasis. 
 
 Also is often misplaced ; e.g. ' I also place some 
 crystals of the salt in the solution,' where ' also ' is 
 not meant to qualify ' place,' but should come after 
 ' place ' or after ' salt.' 
 
 The order of adjectives is sadly neglected, yet 
 even to those readers who do not perceive the 
 causes of their flagging attention, the neglect is 
 fatiguing : e.g. ' He had a prolonged and severe 
 attack ' ; ' The hands are spade-like and short ' ; 
 " He stands quite still and steady ' : in all these 
 sentences the order of the adjectives is contrary to 
 the order of thought, and should have been reversed. 
 In the clause ' enthusiastic, respectful, distant 
 admiration ' we are chilled as we read on, whereas 
 ' distant, respectful, enthusiastic ' would have warmed 
 us. And such examples meet the eye continually. 
 How to economise our adjectives and to use them 
 with directness and frugality is considered under 
 the head of ' Tautology ' (p. 121). 
 
 Now let us pass from the order to the choice 
 of words. Although, as we have seen (p. 9), 
 from the origin of a word we may draw many a 
 delicate tint of thought and fancy, or throw 
 various side-lights on meaning, yet meaning may be 
 put out of scale, or lie under false reflexions, if 
 etymology be too much regarded. It is a common 
 and a tiresome error to suppose that the meaning 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 85 
 
 of a word is to be governed by its etymology. 
 Even on its invention a word may be derived 
 awkwardly or ineptly ; but, however apt in origin, 
 words must grow or drift with the things they 
 signify, and thus become endued with ever new 
 and cumulative content. To hold us to the bald 
 etymology of a word is a pedantry of the plain 
 man, or of the half- educated man, who has not 
 regarded the growth of a word. I have called the 
 error common and tiresome, because in papers and 
 theses it dogs our scientific pupils, and perverts 
 many of their arguments. For example, ' Hyper- 
 pyrexia,' taken on bare etymology, is high or ex- 
 cessive fever ; but it was applied, even in the first 
 instance, not to mere high fever, for which no 
 such grandiose name is required, but to a group of 
 phenomena, a series of changes, of which excessive 
 temperature is an eminent but by no means the 
 only feature. As our knowledge of such processes 
 develops, and as we distinguish and classify them, 
 the more and the less must the name of the class 
 denote. In answer, then, to a question on the pro- 
 cess of hyperpyrexia, to pour forth a heap of hetero- 
 geneous instances in which an elevated temperature 
 occurs, is to lose the bearings of the name in foggy 
 thinking. Again, if the names Tachycardia and 
 Bradycardia mean no more than rapid heart and 
 slow heart respectively, then they are otiose terms, 
 and their use a hollow pedantry. A carnivore is 
 not any animal which eats flesh; nor do we class 
 man as a plantigrade, with the bear and the badger. 
 To take triter instances : the words ' fresh,' ' brisk,' 
 
86 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 ' frisky,' ' royal ' and ' regal,' ' hospital ' and ' hotel,' 
 ' fancy ' and ' phantasy,' have the same origin ; but 
 they are far from being interchangeable. Our use of 
 ' cherub ' raises no notion of Assyrian bulls, nor does 
 an ' epidemic ' bring up the idea of a royal progress 
 {iiTihrjixia 6eov 'Mpidvov); ' danger ' does not suggest 
 dominarium, nor ' veneration ' Venus. Thus the 
 meaning of a word grows or drifts away from its 
 root. Indeed it has been said, and not paradoxi- 
 cally, that the more a word is detached from its 
 origin the more it is at the service of our thought. 
 Furthermore, we must remember that many words 
 are endowed with different proper meanings, mean- 
 ings often far apart ; as ' root ' (in ordinary use, 
 in mathematics, and in philology) ; ' base ' ; ' table ' ; 
 ' act ' (in ordinary life, in the theatre, in univer- 
 sity graduation) ; ' content ' ; ' ether ' ; ' vision ' ; 
 ' general ' (a general of an army stands for captain- 
 general), and so on. Thus in Medicine we speak 
 quite distinctively of General Paralysis and of Pro- 
 gressive Muscular Atrophy ; or geologists speak of 
 Tertiary Man ; or we all speak of a Protestant, 
 and are not misunderstood. In well- written para- 
 graphs the conditions and circumstances of the 
 context settle the particular meaning of many-faced 
 words as surely as a clef in music settles the scale. 
 
 On the other hand, in the work of a fine writer, of 
 prose or of poetry, we shall not overlook the range 
 and colour a word may take when it is used with 
 some regard to its lineage ; by such device it may be 
 charged with a rare significance. When Milton writes 
 
 In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds, 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 87 
 
 we feel the power of the astrological lineage of this 
 great adjective ; and by such concert an author 
 who is as familiar with the anchorage of words in 
 history as he is with their modern use keeps in 
 intimate touch with educated readers. How 
 falsely, on the other hand, an author may write 
 who is not in touch with literature is exemplified 
 on p. 131. 
 
 In progressive language and thought, then, a 
 word, like a living creature, with which, being a 
 function of life, it has much in common, undergoes, 
 from its birth, a process of differentiation. Indeed, 
 when words do not thus develop we may suspect that 
 thought is stationary or declining; for as thought 
 gathers in complexity, and the objects of thought 
 gain in distinctness, words must be continually 
 varied and redistributed ; and he who is indifferent 
 to this distribution, and, either in sheer ignorance 
 or in a raw sense of etymological origins, drags back 
 cultivated and distributed words into rudimentary 
 senses, is a foe to thought (cf. p. 31). "Were every 
 word to be dragged back to its radicals, cultivated 
 speech would come to an end. 
 
 The powers of the parts of speech. — In a recent 
 study on De Quincey, Vernon Lee has shown how 
 much a sentence depends upon its verb, its active as it 
 is its indispensable element. She finds De Quincey 
 poor in verbs, and those which he has to be for the 
 most part mere links — " verbs of existence or mere 
 explanation." For lively and powerful prose the 
 verbs must be lively and powerful ; " they are as 
 the plot to the story." Thus De Quincey's prose 
 
88 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 consists largely of masses of highly-coloured words 
 without progression of thought or deed. 
 
 A certain advocate, when he had a had case, 
 used to shirk ' finite verbs ' ; when reasons failed 
 him he betook himself to the splendour of adjectives 
 and adverbs. So, when Euskin has reason clearly 
 in his mind, the sense of his periods is perfectly 
 balanced ; when he expatiates beyond the boundaries 
 of reason he is wont to cheat the ear with pretty 
 sounds. And in further illustration of her thesis 
 Vernon Lee might have quoted George Sand. This 
 admirable author carries us along in a lively stream ; 
 but the phrase, though not without a certain elegance, 
 is facile ; we do not dwell upon the turn or detaU. of 
 it ; it lacks distinction, and in it also may we recog- 
 nise Vernon Lee's sign — the verbs are weak. The 
 work is too ready ; there is no choiceness in it. 
 
 Interesting as Vernon Lee's canon is, it indicates 
 even more than she says ; it covers and illustrates 
 a larger subject. Indeed, she herself implies that 
 weakness of verb means exiAsrance of adjective. 
 But with your adjectives aim at economy and con- 
 centration of strength ; let them be few, nervous, 
 and direct. Note the force and thrift in such 
 adjectives as these : ' The portals of illimitable 
 sleep ' — noting the swift approach of death, then the 
 rest in the long final monosyllable. Again, 'Lord 
 Lyndhurst was then in the prime of his octogenarian 
 vigour ' ; such an adjective saves a sentence (p. 1 2). 
 As brief illustrations I may quote ' the silent icicles ' 
 — ' Of calling shapes . . . and airy tongues,' — 
 and Browning's 'forky flashing' (torrent). 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 89 
 
 The adjective is often attached to the wrong noun ; 
 e.g. ' a tender and noble trace of passion 'for 'a 
 trace of noble and tender passion.' But in 'the 
 myriad shriek of wheeling ocean fowl,' by the 
 transference of ' myriad ' from ' fowl ' to ' shriek,' a 
 fine effect is obtained. 
 
 That with our adverbs we must use a like 
 choice and chariness I need not stay to declare. 
 In all these exercises the poets are our masters. 
 
 It is to the meagreness of vocahulary of the 
 writers of theses that bluntness to the progressive 
 differentiation of the meaning of words, and a coarse 
 and trite use of them, are chiefly due. Were I, while 
 keeping Acts, to stop to correct every error and to 
 refine every vulgarity of the kind, I should fail, in 
 many cases at any rate, to take the matter of the 
 theses in hand. If the writer is furnished with but 
 a lean stock of words, those that he has must be 
 degraded to rude and indiscriminate uses.'' In 
 such a sentence as this : ' From this centre the 
 germs were extended to other parts ' (for ' were 
 disseminated ' or ' scattered '), the writer does not 
 search for the aptest word for his meaning, nor 
 does he care to do so ; he fills the gap with the 
 handiest of the few in his scrip. I note that many 
 of my candidates are content with one general 
 noun — ' question ' ; two adjectives — ' marked ' and 
 ' localised ' ; one verb — ' to involve ' ; one adverb — 
 ' markedly ' ; one conjunction — ' while.' A problem, 
 
 ^ A few days ago I found on a stall a modest little book entitled 
 Just the Word Wanted (Walker and Co. ) ; a good shilling's worth 
 for young writers. 
 
90 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES ohap. 
 
 a dilemma, a proposition, a subject, a case, or nothing 
 whatever, are all ' questions ' ; e.g. ' He gave credence 
 to a doubtful question ' ; ' The question is one of 
 decreased resistance ' (for the condition or the 
 proUem) ; ' The question is one of decreased tissue 
 change,' where indeed answer would have been 
 nearer the meaning ; ' The question of the shoulder 
 and elbow will be referred to later ' (for ' question ' 
 read affection or injury). ' To involve,' with its 
 ugly noun ' involvement,' has to do duty for ' to 
 attack,' ' to invade,' ' to injure,' ' to affect,' ' to pervert,' 
 ' to encroach upon,' ' to influence,' ' to enclose,' ' to 
 implicate,' ' to permeate,' ' to pervade,' ' to penetrate,' 
 ' to dislocate,' ' to contaminate,' ' to complicate,' and 
 so forth {vide 'Power of the Verb,' p. 87). I see in a 
 thesis before me ' the liver also was involved ; there 
 being a few secondary growths in it ' ; the author 
 might as well have said that his lawn was involved 
 in a few dandelions. Again, ' the an£emia involves 
 the hEemoglobin ' — i.e. a certain chemical compound 
 is enclosed in an abstraction ! The following sentence, 
 even with the context, is scarcely intelligible : 
 
 A lesion affecting the conduction chain, of one gyrus is 
 rarely free from the damaging influence of involvement of the 
 other. 
 
 This seems to mean that ' the one ' is influenced 
 and damaged by its including ' the other,' but 
 it is difficult to be sure of the intention of a very 
 important sentence. Another essayist says ' the 
 gland was not primarily involved,' yet to be 
 ' involved ' must surely be a consequent process. 
 ' Localised ' (with its substantive ' localisation ') has 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 91 
 
 to serve the meanings of ' seated,' ' placed,' ' referred 
 to,' ' narrow,' ' limited,' ' circumscribed,' ' confined,' 
 ' encapsuled,' ' condensed,' ' consolidated,' ' deter- 
 mined,' ' deposited,' ' conveyed to,' etc., etc. ; and 
 moreover is often thrown in gratuitously. One 
 weU-known man of science, not of Cambridge, but 
 even surpassing us in this kind, has lately written 
 that ' many mammals have a localised time for 
 migration.' 'While' is used indiscriminately for 
 ' and,' ' since,' ' although,' ' whereas,' ' notwithstand- 
 ing,' ' nevertheless,' ' yet,' and so forth. 
 
 Not only do we thus supply ourselves iU with 
 words, but we are apt also, even the richer of us, to 
 fall into vocabularian ruts. It is very difficult to 
 avoid mannerism ; a thoughtless habit of slipping 
 into monotonous repetitions, into the reiteration 
 of favourite phrases, which on occasion may be 
 proper enough but, if repeated time after time, 
 suggest a want of fresh thinking. 'Tags' are a 
 mannerism ; such as ' to all intents and purposes ' 
 (where perhaps neither ' intent ' nor ' purpose,' or 
 only one of them, was precisely the word wanted). 
 Some of us are too fond of the word ' character 
 e.g. ' The reports are (of a) satisfactory (character) 
 ' The air they breathe is (of a) vitiated (character) 
 for others, ' nature ' is a pet word ; e.g. ' Its horns 
 are of a spiral nature ' ; ' His intentions were of quite 
 a different nature ' (kind). ' To elucidate the ques- 
 tion of the extent to which (To ascertain how far) 
 the reaction is (of a) temporary (nature) or (has a) 
 permanent (character).' A very able writer can- 
 not avoid ' in that,' which appears for ' that,' ' as,' 
 
92 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 ' because,' ' seeing that,' etc. It is therefore a great 
 advantage now and then to submit our manuscript 
 to a fresh eye, to an eye even less cultivated, as we 
 may think, than our own, in order that we may have 
 our little tricks discovered to us. 
 
 Let us then beware of all repetition of trite phrases, 
 tags, and literary cliches ; some of which are con- 
 ventional quotations : such as ' She discoursed sweet 
 music to my ear ' ; ' He did not deny the soft 
 impeachment,' etc., etc. Others, like small coin 
 defaced by wear, have lost their distinctive values : 
 for instance, ' He was ostracised by his colleagues ' ; 
 ' This auspicious occasion ' ; ' He cordially endorsed 
 his remarks ' ; ' At the first blush ' ; ' He received 
 his coit^p de grdce ' ; ' He was one of Nature's 
 heroes ' ; 'It was a veritable , multum in parvo ' ; 
 ' She monopolised his society ' ; 'To cement our 
 friendly relations ' ; ' His health was prejudiced ' ; 
 ' Excessive exertion must not be indulged in ' (in 
 the text the ' indulgence ' was dock labour) ; ' the 
 rash act ' ; 'a lamentable performance ' ; ' roaring 
 with laughter ' ; ' bathed in tears ' ; and so forth 
 without end. In such mimicry we surrender 
 individual character, talk like parrots, and drop 
 into phrases as empty of thought as this : ' The 
 treatment is by absolute rest and stimiolants.' 
 
 Stale quotations might come under the head of 
 'Tags,' but are considered on p. 135. 
 
 Misused words. — Partly, then, in meagreness 
 of vocabulary, partly in the following of current 
 error, partly in sheer indifference, words are mis- 
 used, some grievously. Three or four of these I 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 93 
 
 will deal with in a full and exemplary manner, to 
 show how words should be weighed and tested ; the 
 rest can then be taken briefly. 
 
 Theory and Fact are deplorably abused words. 
 ' Theory,' in its proper use, signifies the highest 
 form of knowledge. A speculation, supposition, 
 impression, surmise, expectation, assumption, or 
 mere guess takes, let us say, the more definite 
 shape of a notion or view ; the notion or conception 
 may then become more definite and, as it bears 
 further examination, be formulated as a hypothesis. 
 In like manner, if the observer finds his hypothesis 
 strengthened again and again by methodical observa- 
 tion and experiment, and if again and again it is 
 verified by a continually increasing number of 
 competent observers, it ousts competing hypotheses, 
 if any, and assumes the position of a theory ; as, 
 for example, the Newtonian or the Darwinian 
 theory, the theory of the Conservation of Energy, 
 the theory of Ionic Decomposition ; and so forth. 
 It may be objected that, etymologically speaking, 
 a theory is strictly a ' view,' and may be applied to 
 any contemplative vision of things, wide or narrow. 
 But we have just seen (p. 85) that to throw 
 words back upon their etymology would be to 
 throw the language back into its infancy ; that as 
 a language grows its words become more and more 
 specific, and their uses more and more different. 
 Yet even from Plato onwards the ideas of science 
 and art were disengaged, and the word ' theory ' was 
 allotted to the former. Chaucer was correct when 
 he wrote : " The fourth party was to be a theorike. 
 
94 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 to declare the meaning of the celestiall bodies wyth 
 the causes." Thus as the word ' theory ' gained the 
 sense of explanation it lost that of vision. A 
 theory, then, is not any general statement or 
 apprehension, nor indeed absolute truth, but a 
 particular general statement which has been so 
 widely accepted by competent persons that it holds 
 the field. There may be conflicting hypotheses, 
 opinions or explanations, but a general proposition 
 is not a theory until its ascendancy is generally 
 granted ; we ought not, then, to speak of ' two 
 conflicting theories ' in one field of research. It 
 is needless to say that no general statement, how- 
 ever dominant, however well verified, can be final : 
 of the provisional nature of all theories we have 
 now a remarkable illustration when philosophers of 
 the hour are telling us that it is a ' near thing ' for 
 the Atomic theory. Professor Osborne Eeynolds or 
 Professor Larmor does not regard his conception of 
 the intimate constitution of the universe as more 
 than a hypothesis, or lofty speculation. That a 
 certain skull is of the Bronze or Early Iron Age, 
 that a certain drawing is from the hand of Matthew 
 Paris, or that Miss Hickman was kidnapped by 
 the Jesuits, may be my opinion ; but when a 
 journalist calls such an opinion a ' theory ' he 
 impoverishes a language in which far apter words 
 are to be found. A reviewer tells us that in the 
 story of Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey " Mr. Lang 
 himself seems to hanker after a theory of suicide " (!) 
 Yet how much worse is it to use a word of such 
 weight flippantly, contemptuously, as a term of 
 
n ON COMPOSITION- 95 
 
 abuse, or as a mere cliche. A biographer of Virchow 
 writes : ' Virchow had a deeply rooted, constitu- 
 tional (why both adjectives ?) aversion to {from is 
 far more effective than to) all kinds {all Icinds !) of 
 theories, for he credited nothing that could not be 
 definitely proved.' What a muddle ! this of the 
 founder of the Cellular ' Theory ' of Pathology ! If 
 a theory is not proved, what general statement is 
 proved ? We have seen that it is in the degrees of 
 proof that a theory surpasses a hypothesis, a specu- 
 lation, a conjecture, or a guess. To say ' his views 
 are theoretical ' is, strictly speaking, the highest 
 tribute to their truth ; yet the other day, in an 
 important essay, I read ' There is a certain piquancy 
 
 in the theory, which Mr. has shown to be 
 
 more than a mere theory,' etc., etc. (here for 
 ' theory ' read ' conjecture,' or ' speculation '). In 
 another it is written ' The many theories of 
 totemism are but wild guessings in the air.' In 
 another the opinions of an author are called in- 
 differently ' theories ' and ' mares' nests.' Again I 
 read ' The question (problem ?) has not advanced 
 beyond the theoretical stage' (the stage of con- 
 jecture or hypothesis : the theoretical is, so far as 
 thought goes, the final stage). Now it is difficult to 
 realise the evil which this common misuse of the 
 word ' theory ' is working in untrained minds, or 
 the vexation it causes to the thoughtful. A 
 scientific paper lies before me, excellent as to 
 substance, which is blunted by the use of ' theory ' 
 indiscriminately ; in its proper sense, and in the 
 senses of hypothesis {i.e. of an explanation or 
 
96 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 working notion for which some probability exists, 
 but not convincing proof), of opinion, of specu- 
 lation, of conjecture, of surmise, and of hasty 
 ingenuities and arm-chair guesses. 
 
 No less erroneously it is trivially said of a 
 proposition that ' it is true theoretically but is not 
 true in practice ' ; yet if theoretically true it must 
 be universally true. It is idle to allege that a 
 certain proposition is true, if it be true only under 
 conditions which never happen ! E.g. ' The sap 
 may theoretically make its way down to the space 
 where,' etc. (which, however, it never does ?). Or 
 again, ' There is a theoretical objection to balconies 
 (in sanatoria) that they cut off air and light from 
 the room ' . . . which the author proceeds to deny : 
 by ' theoretical ' he seems to mean ' baseless ' ; or 
 does he mean ' negligible ' ? — from the context one 
 cannot tell, but in either case the word is used 
 absurdly. When a balloon rises gravitation does 
 not become ' practically false.' The manifestation 
 of every general or ' theoretical ' law is subject to 
 incidental perturbations and deflexions, but the law 
 never loses its validity, never fails of its effect ; 
 inexplicable or unfathomable it may be, evanescent 
 never. What people mean by such phrases may 
 be that a theoretical statement, though valid, is 
 too abstract for immediate practical application ; 
 thus theories of barometrical pressure are too 
 abstract to be applied directly to weather fore- 
 casts ; they are not ' practically false,' but they 
 enter into combinations so many and complex that 
 in particular cases the indications are too obscure 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 97 
 
 to be useful. In other words, theory is misleading 
 in so far only as it is inadequate theory ; the conflu- 
 ence of the useful and of the theoretical is a matter 
 of time. In statecraft similar contrasts are found ; 
 as Mr. Bryce has well put it, " The habit of medi- 
 tating on underlying truths, the tendency to play 
 the long game, are almost certain to spoil a man 
 for dealing effectively with the present. He will 
 not be a sufficiently vigilant observer ; he will be 
 out of sympathy with the notions of the average 
 man." But he is far from saying that the under- 
 lying truths are visionary or useless. 
 
 If we leave the sphere of science we find 
 ' theory ' supplanting ' ideal ' or ' vision,' a use 
 which in the sphere of literature is no less inept. 
 When Mr. Bryce goes on to write of Beaconsfield's 
 ' fondness for theories rather than facts,' and of his 
 putting ' large and imposing theories into vague and 
 solemn language,' I suggest that ' ideas,' ' fancies,' 
 ' speculations,' ' dreams,' or ' visions ' was the proper 
 word. There are other abasements of this un- 
 happy but, in its proper sense, invaluable word ; as 
 various as they are many. A philosopher in a 
 certain review contends that ' Sir F. Pollock has 
 minimised the difference between Dr. Joachim's 
 theory and his own as to Spinoza's meaning here ' 
 — a theory of a theory ! (for this context inter- 
 pretation was the proper word). We find ' theory ' 
 used also for ideas of the imagination, and for 
 myth ; uses, however, not so degraded as when, by 
 the War Office, a scheme for cadets is called a theory : 
 ' The theory is that promotion takes place (at this 
 
 H 
 
98 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 and the other stage), but,' etc. For ' theory ' read 
 ' assumption,' ' rule,' ' scheme,' ' system,' ' cadre ' ? 
 Even the Times, usually careful in language, calls its 
 device for the sale of the Uncydopcedia Britannica 
 a ' new theory of bookselling ' ; and suggests to us 
 ' various theories ' (methods) of indexing. But a 
 remnant is left! In contrast to such naughtiness 
 it is refreshing to note the other day in a review 
 (in Nature) of the first volume of the posthumous 
 papers of Helmholtz, as follows : 
 
 From its first appearance on the title-page to the end of 
 the book, the word ' theory ' is employed in its accurate 
 sense only — to indicate not the hazy guess of a vivid 
 imagination [the reviewer might have said ' the idle guess of 
 an idle hour'], but an attempt at a comprehensive survey 
 and a concise description of facts. 
 
 And Professor Noel Hartley (at the British Associa- 
 tion 1903) said weU : 
 
 It was based upon definite observations controlled by 
 exact physical measurements, and was, therefore, a theory 
 rather than a hypothesis. 
 
 The proper climax is this: (1) guess; (2) 
 hypothesis; (3) theory; (4) work. 
 
 Of hypothesis I have just read in a journal, 
 ' This is not a hypothesis, but the result of observa- 
 tions.' It is of no use to wonder what the writer 
 meant ; had he ever considered his meaning, he 
 would have asked himself on what else a hypothesis 
 could be founded ? By ' hypothesis ' he probably 
 meant ' conjecture.' 
 
 Fact{ior 'truth,' ' proposition,' ' rule,' ' axiom,' etc.). 
 In a leading article in a scientific journal I read, ' No 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 99 
 
 investigation on these lines can convert a tentative 
 hypothesis into a scientific /aci.' Even in the essays 
 of eminent men of science we often read, ' Such and 
 such a theory is now proved definitely to be a fact ' ; 
 or again, such and such a statement is 'no longer a 
 theory but an established fact.' It is difficult to 
 conceive the process of thought, if thought it be, by 
 which such statements are arrived at (p. 41). Another 
 essayist, in denouncing 'cram,' after noting 'theory' 
 as ' nebulous,' says ' cram consists in so many theo- 
 retical facts, and the student has to get up these 
 facts' (presumably he meant truths, or doctrines? 
 for truth, in science, means a valid affirmative 
 proposition). Now a ' fact ' is, in thought, of no 
 value whatsoever ; it is only by means of its associa- 
 tion with other facts in the formation of general 
 propositions that to the mind a fact becomes valu- 
 able. 'A fact is something which has occurred, it 
 has no reference whatever to the future. To say 
 that the sun is shining means that up to the instant 
 of my assertion it wcos shining. That on the 30 th 
 of next January Venus will be in conjunction with 
 Jupiter, is not a fact, but a prediction or truth. 
 That in incompetence of the aortic valve blood 
 returns into the left ventricle, is a truth or general 
 statement, not a fact; though such statements are 
 founded upon innumerable series of facts (or past 
 events) in this sequence. So again, that the earth 
 revolves about the sun is not a 'fact' but a 
 general proposition or theory, based upon recorded 
 facts. When an accomplished physician ascribed to 
 Virchow the demonstration of the ' fact ' that our 
 
100 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 conceptions of morbid processes must be founded 
 upon histological processes, he should have said not 
 ' fact ' but truth. That a hypothesis may become a 
 theory, we have seen (p. 9 8) ; but it can no more 
 become a fact than a house can become a brick. 
 This error of taking doctrines and assertions for facts 
 is a dangerous one : indeed, when I hear ' this is an 
 undoubted fact,' I prepare myself to expect a general 
 proposition uttered with precocious confidence. 
 
 Type and typical are also words which fare 
 badly in our scientific papers ; for instance, to use 
 ' type ' in the sense of mere quantity or degree, as 
 that influenza, or pneumonia, has ' changed its type,' 
 is an error. A type is a certain kind of fiction ; 
 a physician observes again and again that particular 
 symptoms are apt to recur together : Dr. Graves, 
 let us say, observed an orderly recurrence of a 
 certain group of characters consisting of accelerated 
 pulse, swollen thyroid, protuberant eyes, and so 
 forth. No two instances of the recurrence were 
 identical, it is true ; and on classifying the symp- 
 toms of the cases by their relative frequencies, 
 this observer found that many of them, such as 
 nervousness, fretfulness, or sleeplessness, are so 
 frequent in disease that their recurrence has no 
 special significance; yet the three signs mentioned 
 before, although severally far less common, recurred 
 in combination with a frequency very much greater 
 than the chances of mere coincidence could account 
 for. Dr. Graves then conceived, as we know, that 
 this association is more than a chance coinci- 
 dence — more than such a coincidence, let us say, 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 101 
 
 as the parallel fluctuation observed for a few years 
 between Cambridge Wranglers and the sun-spots ; 
 he perceived that they are permanently or ' uncon- 
 ditionally ' related, and probably effects of common 
 causes. Furthermore he or his followers began to 
 note that certain other symptoms, such as tremor, 
 are frequent in this combination. Some observers 
 noted that disordered pigmentation of the skin often 
 occurs in the group of phenomena now called G-raves's 
 disease, and with more than chance frequency ; 
 thus by them leucoderma is said to recur with 
 those symptoms too frequently to be a mere coin- 
 cidence ; others, again, are of the contrary opinion, 
 and so on. The observer then, having brought into 
 comparison all the records he can get hold of, casts 
 aside one by one the features which he is led to 
 regard as incidental, and selects those which recur 
 in such patients with a frequency higher than mere 
 coincidence. Then within his new group he sub- 
 ordinates these in the order of frequency : very few 
 may prove constant, perhaps the one of accelera- 
 tion of the heart only ; others, such as protrusion 
 of the eye or thyroid, tremor, or diarrhoea, though 
 not constant, have severally more or less high 
 degrees of frequency in the group. Thus, by dis- 
 regarding irregular or intermediate cases, he is en- 
 abled to draw a convenient line between symptoms 
 concurrent in higher frequency — ' the characteristic 
 symptoms ' — and those of low or even mere in- 
 cidental frequency ; and it is with the former 
 that he builds up an imaginary picture or ' type.' 
 Now this conception is attained by a negative or 
 
102 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 abstracting process, by stripping off in the several 
 cases what is individual in them. But, as a 
 practitioner, the physician moves in the contrary 
 direction ; it is for him to treat the individual, to 
 clothe the conventional skeleton, diagram, or ' type ' 
 with the features of the man affected ; and to 
 treat not the type — a nonentity conceived only 
 as a device of thought — but the concrete man as 
 he lives. The abstract physician, who treats types, 
 practises in vacuo ; the empirical physician, on the 
 contrary, having but a vague conception of a 
 type, treats the sick man item by item, not appre- 
 ciating the relative values of the several phenomena 
 of his morbid period.^ 
 
 Now the same considerations apply, mutatis mu- 
 tandis, to types in biology, and we shall agree that 
 types are but artifices of thought, and are to be used as 
 schemes, to include not by any means all the causes 
 at work in a particular case, but certain main lines 
 of causation only ; and to signify not by any means 
 water-tight compartments of disease, for by way of 
 aberrant and intermediate cases we may travel 
 from any one such conception to any other, but 
 broad outlines of the landscape of disease ; such 
 features as in a landscape would be sketched by the 
 geologist, not by the painter or by the gardener. 
 
 A typical feature, then, is not a phenomenon 
 curious in itself, but one characteristic of a kind ; it 
 
 ' Some diseases are more variable about their ' type ' than 
 others ; and it would be interesting in respect of species and 
 regression to work this comparison out, not in th& diseases of man 
 only. But I must not be tempted beyond the limits of our 
 present purpose. 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 103 
 
 is more typical or less so in the degree of frequency 
 in which it occurs in this or that abstract idea of 
 a disease ; it indicates an area of greatest density 
 in certain recurrent series. 
 
 But here is a confusion in language : type is 
 sometimes used for example ; for instance, ' He is 
 the very type of an Irishman,' or ' He is a type 
 we should do well to imitate ' ; but by this we 
 mean that having built up from many Irish persons 
 an abstract conception, or type, of the kind called 
 Irishman, we light, let us say, upon Sheridan, who 
 fulfils our idea so vividly and completely that we 
 clothe the vision with life. To impersonate a type 
 gives us a picture we would not willingly forgo ; 
 and, if the antithesis be not forgotten, the gain to 
 the fancy may be more than the loss to the under- 
 standing. Nevertheless we shall avoid such fallacious 
 phrases as an ' aberrant type,' which is absurd ; or 
 ' there is an inconstancy of type,' when we mean 
 either that our examples are unconformable, or that 
 our segregation of proper characters is as yet 
 incomplete. Of a case we may say that it is 
 aberrant when it deviates unusually from our mental 
 diagram ; or of another, if we find ourselves unable 
 to relate it to any type whatever, we may say it is 
 ' atypical ' ; but we must not confuse these words 
 and call a case ' atypical ' when we mean only 
 aberrant. 
 
 Entity is a word which is making its way back 
 into science, especially into medicine. Physicians 
 take grave counsel together whether such and such 
 a nosological series does, or does not, constitute a 
 
104 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 ' morbid entity.' Now in any use, antique or 
 modern, entity must mean real existence or ' sub- 
 stance ' behind a group of phenomena, or ' form,' 
 as in this context—' whereby it is apparent that 
 the vis or energy that is in natural bodies is an 
 entity of a distinct nature from matter simply as 
 such,' and so on ; in other words, to the kind itself 
 is attributed a real existence, apart from the indi- 
 viduals of the kind — an ancient ghost one supposed 
 had been laid by William Ockham some six and a 
 half centuries ago. 
 
 The Greek Aristotle, as distinguished from the 
 medieval Aristotle, was probably of opinion that a 
 kind has indeed a sort of reality, as a conception of 
 the observer's mind ; but as such a conception only. 
 If, then, by the inquiry whether a nosological 
 series be an entity or not, we seek only to know 
 whether it be constant enough for formulation as a 
 conception in the observer's mind ('Type,' p. 102), 
 well and good ; but it has not been customary to 
 call a concept an 'entity.' And I suspect for their 
 entity nosologists mean not to be content with' so 
 elusive a reality. They may not be dreaming of 
 substance apart from phenomena, but I suppose 
 they would suggest that this or the other disease 
 has an individual existence, as of a dog or a cat. 
 We may call a dog an entity if we like, though no 
 one does : but we certainly do not, as biologists, 
 speak of the canine species as an entity. And a 
 disease is not even a species ; it is but a phase of 
 change to which the individuals of species are more 
 or less subject. As a matter of experience we find 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 105 
 
 that Man, at any rate, is not ill anyhow ; he falls 
 ill on one or other of certain different lines, lines 
 which are determined in part no doubt by the lines 
 of his normal structure, in part by peculiarities in 
 the causes of disease. Although no two cases of 
 typhoid fever, of malaria, or of pneumonia are 
 identical, they are similar ; their similarity being due 
 in part to the similarity of man to man and of organ 
 to organ, in part to the similarity of their respective 
 microbes. If I spin some similar tops and, when 
 they are asleep,- strike them, and strike them pretty 
 much in the same way and in a moderate degree, 
 so much in the same way they will fall ill : some 
 may wobble beyond recovery, but most of them will 
 recover, and in approximately equal periods. So a 
 case of typhoid fever, malaria, or pneumonia is a 
 product of a kind of deflexion by a special external 
 disturbance and the inertia of the afflicted individual. 
 Where is the entity ? 
 
 It was in the paper of no tiro that I noted the 
 other day, ' I regard the cause of an infectious 
 disease as an entity in itself, something foreign and 
 external' [why both adjectives? (p. 121)]. Here 
 confusion is worse than ever, for the cause of 
 a disease is certainly not the disease ; and it is the 
 latter which is usually intended by the ' morbid 
 entity.' And surely it is pedantic enough to call 
 arsenic or lead, for example, ' entities in them- 
 selves ' ? Another physician, no less eminent, 
 writes, ' Whether we regard the symptoms as an 
 entity, or merely as a syndrome occurring in divers 
 affections ' ; a sentence surely a long way from clarity ! 
 
106 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 The right question is this : Have I noted in a 
 moving equilibrium, say in Man, that a certain series 
 of changes, static and dynamic, has occurred more 
 than once ; if so, was the recurrence still fortuitous, 
 or was the series a case of an orderly recurrent 
 mode, which hitherto had escaped attention ? If 
 so, the recurrence will be observed again and again, 
 whether by myself or by others, in approximate 
 uniformity. The cases of the newly observed series 
 will vary, some indeed so far as to trespass upon 
 other nosological series already recognised, and no 
 strict demarcation can be drawn around them ; yet 
 there may nevertheless be difference enough and 
 constancy enough to make it worth our while, for 
 the convenience of observation and thought, to erect 
 the new series into a category of its own, and to stick 
 a label on it ? We shall demand, then, no more than 
 this : Does the series recur with uniformity enough 
 to make it desirable for purposes of identification 
 and comparison to name it ; as, for our convenience, 
 we name a uniformly recurring set of stars, Orion 
 or Charles' Wain ? 
 
 The following casual list of words which suffer 
 misuse is but illustrative, to put candidates on their 
 guard. I had strung most of them together from 
 theses for degrees, before I knew that in his Errors 
 in the Use of English Dr. Hodgson had covered the 
 ground so fully. 
 
 Acceptation (the being received) for ' acceptance ' (the act 
 of receiving). A gift may be offered for acceptance in the 
 belief that it is worthy of acceptation. 
 
 Actual (for ' precise,' etc.) : e.g. ' the actual number was 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 107 
 
 ten ' ; ' such was the actual case in question,' and so on. 
 
 ' The actual death was by exhaustion ' is a curious example 
 
 (for the precise mode of death?). We shall see (p. 124) 
 
 that ' actual,' like ' in reality,' often a maid of all work, is for 
 
 the most part redundant. 
 
 Alternative primarily was not used of more than two, 
 
 but by recent writers {e.g. Mill and Gladstone) the word is 
 
 used of three or more. The extension is convenient, and 
 
 justifiable. 
 
 Antedates, used for ' precedes,' means to put a date back, 
 
 as on a document. "By what would appear an antedated 
 
 gratitude " (Boyle). 
 
 Appreciation is an estimate — a setting or comparison of 
 
 price or value : not a raising or a rising of value. 
 
 Averse to: a mimicry of ' adverse to.' 'Averse from' is 
 correct, and is far more effectual. 
 
 Avocation. During the last few years, probably in the 
 pursuit of fine language, this word has taken the place of 
 ' vocation ' ; whereby a valuable distinction is lost. Even 
 Euskin has written ' in pursuit of their ordinary avocations.' 
 'Avocation' is the calling away from an occupation ; e.g. 'What 
 is a scholar but one who retireth his person, and avocateth 
 his mind from other occupations.' In these two recent 
 instances it is used effectively : ' Here I enjoy profound 
 retirement, safe from the interruption of troublesome avoca- 
 tions.' ' Outside his profession the physician should pursue 
 some hobby or pleasant avocation.' 
 
 Between (by twain) should be used of two things only. 
 We may not speak of 'stirring up ill-will between (amongst) 
 all these various races.' An example of another kind of 
 error in the use of this word is ' between the junction of the 
 two rivers ' for ' between the two rivers at their junction.' 
 
 Capable ; in a passive sense : e.g. ' The salts are capable 
 of being absorbed by the membrane ' (for ' The membrane is 
 capable of absorbing the salts ') ; ' This morbid process is 
 capable of being cured.' Liable ; in similar error : e.g. 
 ' Bronchitis is liable to occur ' (for ' the patient is liable to,' 
 etc.) ; 'This fungus is liable (apt) to cause a blight' ; 'His 
 irregular habits are liable to injure his business' ; or again, very 
 absurdly, ' The geological strata most liable to cancer,' etc., etc. 
 
108 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 Case (for ' patient ') : e.g. ' the case recovered ' ; ' the case is 
 living and in good health ' ; ' cases which could not take such 
 large doses.' ' Five of the empyematas died ' is a similar 
 piece of clumsiness ; but the grimmest blunder of the kind 
 is ' Of the 276 deaths 16 had gallstones.' 
 
 Claims (for ' says,' ' maintains,' or ' asserts ') is an unfor- 
 tunate following of the Americans, who in many cases retain 
 uses of words far better worth our imitation. To ' claim ' such 
 and such a result is not suggestive of a modest and diffident 
 search after truth. 
 
 Climax (as ' acme ' or ' summit ') ; a modern abuse un- 
 known to Samuel Johnson. The ' climacteric period ' is not 
 the acme of life, but the upper slope of it. In fine prose 
 the rising and enlarging purport of the sentences of a 
 period or oration are called by grammarians a climax 
 (kAi/ao^, scala). Thus the accurate Berkeley speaks of ' a 
 certain climax or gradation of thought.' 
 
 Commence (for ' begin '). ' To commence ' is proper for 
 formal public functions and the like : e.g. ' the term com- 
 mences ' or ' the session commences ' ; so ' an action at law 
 commences,' ' a career commences,' and so forth : to say ' I 
 had just commenced my breakfast ' is ridiculous. 
 
 Compare to may be as correct as ' convenient to,' but 
 ' with ' is more expressive. 
 
 Compensated for. ' The defect in the valve is compen- 
 sated (for) by the growth of the muscle ' ; here ' for ' is not 
 only redundant but also perverse ; as it would be in the 
 sentence ' The apples are balanced for by the weight in the 
 opposite scale.' In the sentence ' I compensated him for the 
 damage done ' the preposition is correctly inserted. 
 
 Constant is often used for 'frequent' (vide p. 125). 
 
 Continuous is ' uninterrupted,' ' unceasing ' ; continue/ 
 ' an incessant renewal ' ; e.g. a continuous hum, or a con- 
 tinuaJ hubbub : at any rate such is the best usage. 
 
 ' Contrary,' ' conversely,' ' reversely, ' vice versa" are 
 not to be used indifferently. It is correct to say ' On the 
 contrary 1 do not approve, I deny that assertion.' But in 
 the sentence ' The sensation of hunger is not due to the mere 
 emptiness of the stomach . . ■ ; conversely under abnormal 
 conditions we may feel hungry on a full stomach,' ' con- 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 109 
 
 versely ' should be reversely (conversely would be ' The empti- 
 ness of the stomach is not due to the sensation of hunger '). 
 A political speaker said the other day, ' If you wish to keep 
 your Empire together you must have preferential tariffs,' and 
 proceeded to urge — what he called ' the converse proposition ' 
 — ' If you preserve free trade you cannot preserve your Em- 
 pire ' — but this is the reverse proposition : the converse would 
 be ' If you wish to have preferential tariffs you must keep 
 your Empire together,' and the contrary would be ' If you 
 wish, etc., you must not have preferential tariffs.' The 
 horse may be put before the cart, or reversely the cart may 
 be put before the horse j but in the sentence 'As the tide 
 flows up the channel there is flowing along the shore a 
 current in the reverse direction' read 'up the channel 
 ... a contrary current flows along the shore,' for the 
 current, though opposed, is not ' reversed.' (This sentence 
 errs also in ' Indirect Construction,' vide p. 56.) Again, ' The 
 specific identity or the reverse of these two forms,' etc. — 
 what is the reverse of specific identity 1 — should read ' The 
 specific identity or difference.' ' The Mayor may take the 
 chair, and the Vice-chancellor may propose the motion, or 
 vice versa ' (i.e. ' turn about '), is correct, but it is erroneous to 
 write ' Whether the peritonitis set up the pleurisy or vice 
 versa (conversely) we could not decide ' ; and such errors bother 
 the reader. We may contrast these several meanings by 
 varying one sentence, e.g. 'Every person who was attacked 
 with typhoid had eaten watercress.' The contrary proposi- 
 tion would be ' No one who was attacked had eaten water- 
 cress.' The converse proposition would be ' Every one who had 
 eaten watercress was attacked by typhoid.' The reverse would 
 be ' No one who had eaten watercress was attacked by typhoid.' 
 
 Desirability and undesirability, undenlability, etc., 
 if we cannot reprehend, we may look upon coldly, and 
 reliability is worse still. The Times recently began an 
 article thus : " ' Reliability ' has no meaning in English, for 
 there is no such word ; in ' motorese ' it means," etc., etc. 
 
 Develop (for ' manifest,' ' appear,' ' arise,' ' take place,' etc.) 
 is often used for retrograde processes ; e.g. ' she developed 
 emaciation ' or ' a bedsore ' ; ' he developed a cavity in the 
 lung,' ' a cough,' or ' a rash on the skin.' As such processes 
 
110 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 are of the nature not of development but of demolition, the 
 eye of the mind is put backwards. 
 
 Different to, an error for different from. A like error 
 is ' different than ' (for otlier than) ; e.g. ' They had a different 
 notion of books than their fathers had.' 
 
 Differentiate is now applied to the phases of evolution, 
 and it is neither necessary nor desirable to use it for ' to 
 distinguish,' ' discriminate,' or ' contrast ' ; as in ' He diifer- 
 entiated its toxic effects in the rabbit from those it produces 
 in man ' ; here the differentiation lay not with the observer, 
 but with nature. Or again, with less excuse, for separate : 
 e.g. ' The fibroid was sharply differentiated (separated) by a 
 thin capsule from the surrounding tissue.' 
 
 Dis(as)similation seems too bad for any one, but it 
 appears not rarely in our theses : happily the word is not 
 wanted. 
 
 Either (which properly signifies any one of two), for ' each 
 or ' both ' ; a vexatious error ; as e.g. ' Tie the vessel on either 
 side (for both sides) of the place of section.' ' The pulses 
 are equal at either wrist.' ' If we out a piece out of the 
 stem of a polyp ... a head is formed at either end ' (both 
 ends ? the context does not decide). I read lately, 'Air is 
 given by ventilators at either end of the room ' ; here again 
 from the context I could not decide the meaning. ' On either 
 side of her walked a tall gentleman in military dress ' (dodging 
 to and fro ?) ' Each ' seems to be slipping out of memory. It 
 is no answer to appeal to the primary meaning of either (vide 
 p. 85) ; the word is now distributed, and the need of the dis- 
 tinction is pressing. There is a sense, however, in which 
 either may be used effectively ; i.e. when the alternatives are 
 not contemplated together, and this diversion of the attention 
 ' either ' may indicate conveniently or picturesquely : e.g. ' As 
 we sailed up this great river a magnificent landscape was 
 spread forth on either side of us ' (as we gazed, that is, to the 
 right hand or the left). If ' either' is used as one of three or 
 more, the alternatives must be carried forward by repeating 
 'or.' We may not say that 'he may take either of three 
 ways ' ; but that he may take ' either this way, that, or the 
 other.' 
 
 Equally with (for ' as well as '). 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 111 
 
 Except (for ' unless '), as in ' except (unless) you want 
 ine to.' 
 
 Female (for ' woman ') is, speaking generally (in spite of 
 Scott), disagreeably zoological. 
 
 Firstly (for 'first'). 'Secondly,' 'thirdly,' etc., are 
 correct ; but 'firstly' is not in good usage. 
 
 Identical (for ' akin '), as in the sentence ' We may regard 
 pneumonia and cerebrospinal fever as identical,' an absurd 
 but very frequent blunder. In the sentence ' A, B, C, and D 
 having thus a similar effect are respectively identical,' the 
 word ' respectively ' makes the identity still harder to grasp. 
 Individual, for 'person,' is slovenly when the precise 
 meaning of the word (as single or disconnected) is not 
 required ; e.g. we rightly distinguish between a crowd and 
 the individuals of whom it consists. ' Who have not a single 
 vote amongst them, collectively or individually ' ; ' That 
 individuals die his will ordains, The propagated species 
 still remains ' ; are sentences in which the use of ' individual ' 
 is correct and telling. 
 
 Lengthy, an inelegant exchange for long. 'This is a 
 lengthy question ' (for ' a long inquiry '). It is worse than 
 inelegant to say ' lengthened ' for ' long,' e.g. ' a lengthened 
 period ' (for ' a long time '). A lengthened period means an 
 extension of it ; e.g. a lease may be lengthened from seven to 
 fourteen years. 
 
 Limited (for 'small,' ' slight,' or ' narrow ') : e.g. we should 
 not write ' a limited acquaintance,' or ' a limited field of 
 vision ' : ' limited ' is that to which limits are, or have been, 
 set ; as ' thenceforth his limited ambition was content,' etc. 
 ' The epidemic raged in a limited area ' is wrong ; but ' By 
 these means the area of its activity was limited ' is correct. 
 
 Natural (for 'normal') ; e.g. ' the heart was natural,' when 
 no one had alleged that it was factitious : unfortunately all 
 disease is 'natural.' 
 
 Never (for 'not'). 'I never remember to have seen' 
 means ' I always forget.' 
 
 Numerous and many deserve some discrimination ; it is 
 better to prefer ' numerous ' for subjects consisting of many 
 parts : e.g. to speak of many persons but of a numerous 
 crowd. 
 
112 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 Obnoxious (for ' noxious '). 
 
 Only and alone (vide p. 83). ' Alone ' is often used 
 incorrectly for ' only,' and vice versa : e.g. ' Only my son got 
 a prize ' for ' my son alone,' etc. No doubt ' only ' and 
 ' alone ' may have an almost identical sense, as in 'I only 
 am escaped alone to tell tbee ' (yet here the ' alone ' is not 
 emphatic only, but suggests also a perilous flight). In the 
 next sentence, from a well -written scientific paper, these 
 words are accurately contrasted : ' It is the only reagent by 
 which alone the effect can be produced.' ' You alone stood 
 by me ' is right — -' You only stood by me ' suggests that you 
 might have sat down. 
 
 Operable is wanted and may be admitted ; although 
 ' operor ' is the verb. 
 
 Otherwise means not a negative but after another fashion, 
 or in another way. ' Their success or otherwise,' or ' its 
 presence or otherwise' is nonsense. The sentences should 
 be ' their success or failure,' ' its presence or absence.' ' The 
 necessity of the step or otherwise' is a bad expression for 
 ' necessary or unnecessary.' 
 
 Owing to — when no debt should be implied : e.g. ' We use 
 this teat omng to its being simpler ' (for ' as it is simpler '). So 
 again, ' Owing to (as) the ordinary medical attendant being 
 (was) from home.' 
 
 Paradox. I often read ' it seems paradoxical to say so.' 
 Paradox consists in the seeming; if there were no such seeming 
 there would be no paradox. 
 
 Partake. To partake of a meal, etc., is to share it with 
 others. 
 
 Period (for ' date ' or ' time ') : a period is a certain course 
 (of time). 
 
 Phenomenal, for ' wonderful,' ' miraculous,' is very inept. 
 
 Predicate (for 'predict'): as in 'You may predicate (1) 
 the result of such conduct.' 
 
 PreTen(ta)tive ; a common blunder. 
 
 Quite a number is not quite so absurd as quite a few ; 
 but both are among the ' dumps ' from America which we 
 can do without. 
 
 Regular, as a mere expletive : e.g. ' The operator found 
 himself in a reputor difficulty.' 'The man proved to be a 
 
II ON COMrOSITION 113 
 
 regular malingerer.' ' Close-fisted as he is, he is a regular 
 Crcesus.' 
 
 Replace, for 'displace,' 'substitute,' 'supplant,' 'succeed.' 
 To replace is to restore. A king may be replaced on his 
 throne or he may be displaced, and succeeded by another. 
 We may speak of displacement fibrosis of an organ ; not of 
 replacement fibrosis. ' The molars were entirely replaced by 
 a few old stumps ' (for ' replaced ' read represented). So again, 
 not the disease but the patient relapses. 
 
 BeCLUires ; used as follows : ' The surgeon requires to be 
 careful ' (for ' it is required of the surgeon,' or, still better, 
 ' the surgeon must be careful ') ; ' This knife requires to be 
 (must be) kept for cutting onions.' 
 
 Rudimentary, in the sense of ' degraded ' or ' vestigial.' 
 
 Separate out (for ' set apart ' or ' divide ') is inelegant. 
 
 Singular or unique (for ' rare ' or ' notable ') is careless ; 
 as is extreme for ' much ' or ' considerable.' 
 
 Small and little, and many other such common words 
 which cannot be severally cited, should not be used in- 
 discriminately ; e.g. we speak of a small parish but of a 
 little lad. 
 
 Surroundings is in ordinary cases an ugly substitute for 
 ' circumstances.' 
 
 Than (for ' when '). ' I had scarcely turned my back than 
 he fell back in a fit.' 
 
 The latter (for ' the last ') must not be used when more 
 than two are concerned. A like error is to use the super- 
 lative when two only are concerned ; e.g. ' She was the 
 eldest (elder) of his two daughters.' 'You may tie it above or 
 below but the last is the test way ' (' the latter is the better ' 
 would be grammatically correct, but not pretty ; the sentence 
 should be altered). ' The former ' and ' the latter ' are 
 used too frequently : e.g. ' The former is the sense of an 
 active exertion, the latter is the sense of relaxation after 
 exertion' for 'That is, etc. . . . this is, etc' (p. 52). 
 
 ' In my then circumstances,' and ' in his seldom use of 
 it,' are very slovenly writing, and a misuse of words. 
 
 Together with and in addition to (for ' and,' 
 ' besides,' ' moreover,' etc.), if not erroneous, are tire?omely 
 frequent. 
 
 I 
 
114 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 To lavage may I think be admitted (on the analogy of 
 'to manage,' etc.). 
 
 To lie and to lay • ' He lay (laid) down in his wet 
 clothes,' ' This notion underlay (underlaid) his speech,' are 
 instances of vulgar errors which still reappear. 
 
 Traumatism (for 'trauma,' itself a somewhat pedantic 
 word) ; traumatism is of course the result of the ' trauma' — 
 the condition produced by it. 
 
 Veracity is not truth but the faculty of truthfulness. 
 We speak of a veracious person, but not of a veracious 
 proposition. 
 
 Verbal (for ' oral ') : e.g. ' a verbal (oral) message ' ; a 
 written message can hardly avoid being ' verbal.' 
 
 Without (for ' unless ') : e.g. ' I was not to go without 
 (unless) my mother gave me leave.' Without — for ' with- 
 out taking into consideration,' or ' not to mention ' — is a 
 vexatious use, increasing of late. It is too elliptical. The 
 following sentence from a thoughtful but unskilful writer 
 puzzled me for some minutes : ' It is hard enough for the 
 modern artist to paint a naked body accurately without 
 putting his own dreams and passions into it : Michael Angelo 
 did this.' Michael Angelo painted the body without putting 
 his dreams and passions into it ! Gracious ! At length it 
 occurred to me that by ' without ' the author meant without 
 taking into consideration — ' let alone,' as we sometimes say. 
 Thus 'to paint the body accurately, let alone putting' etc., 
 would read clearly enough. 
 
 It is no misuse or solecism (as is often alleged) to make a 
 compound word from two languages : such an objection to 
 ' appendicitis,' for example, is not to be sustained ; for ' itis ' 
 is an affix, as is ' ly ' (like) in English which is regularlv 
 attached of course to words of Latin or Greek origin, as in 
 'divinely,' 'grammatically,' etc. Indeed, a contrary rule would 
 eviscerate our language. Cf. e.g. the different meanings of 
 remissness and remission, distinctness and distinction, diffuseness 
 and diffusion, and so forth. The fault of ' relationship ' is not 
 hybridity but superfluity ; 'tion ' and 'ship' being equivalents, 
 or nearly so. Again, ' ism,' a Greek termination, is properly 
 affixed to words of sundry origin. 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 115 
 
 Some specimens of s^iperfine language may be 
 quoted as of too frequent recurrence in our theses : 
 ' Previously to ' (for ' before ') ; as, ' I had not seen 
 him previously,' ' This is his method of procedure ' 
 (said not of a laboratory process, or the like, but 
 for ' that is his way ') ; ' The patient experienced a 
 pain in his side ' ; ' His strength was reduced to a vast 
 extent.' So ' eventuate ' (for ' issue '), and ' literature ' 
 (for ' scientific records ' or ' papers '). In a thesis 
 before me the candidate writes, 'And I should 
 sustain the metabolic processes of the individual ' ; 
 by which, as the context tells me, he meant no 
 more than ' I would feed the patient carefully.' 
 I earnestly advise the student to examine technical 
 gibberish suspiciously, and to avoid it if he can. 
 Why ' post-mortem ' when no more is meant than 
 ' after death ' ? 
 
 The truth is, when a young writer sets himself 
 to literary work he is often misled by a false notion 
 of composition. That in the first place he shall fill 
 his mind with as much experience as he has been 
 able to gather, and that before taking up his pen 
 he shall dwell in thought upon his matter a while, 
 until his subject projects itself in clear outline, we 
 are all agreed ; thus far he does well. But when he 
 takes pen in hand he is apt to search still abroad 
 instead of within. He conceives that to express 
 himself effectively he must fetch words from afar, 
 and weave them into highly complex webs. But 
 if with a single eye he will meditate on his 
 garnered material he will find it building itself 
 without hands in the forms of his own temperament. 
 
116 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 When we talk of ' objective truth ' we talk, of 
 course, of what cannot be. The material must 
 go through the factory, and as our factories are 
 different the produce cannot be all the same. 
 The writer who substitutes products from another 
 factory interests no one; even in science the 
 personal factor is welcome. However young, 
 then, the essayist may be, if write he must, having 
 looked abroad first, let him then look within. Let 
 him not search afield for long and complicated 
 forms and elaborated words, nor for large and 
 decorated vestures ; if he can get well home on his 
 ideas the simplest and closest words will do. Let 
 him see not how finely but how plainly and directly 
 he can express himself ? If, stripping off all encum- 
 brance, he win look nearer home for his words, and 
 put these together as concisely as he can, the figure 
 of his thought will move more freely, and will 
 animate a lighter drapery. 
 
 What word-mongery can attain such effects as 
 these, where the words are of the very simplest ? 
 
 Awake, north wind ; and come, thou south ; blow 
 upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. 
 
 Let's make medicines of our great revenge. To cure this 
 deadly grief. 
 
 Blasts that blow the poplar white. 
 
 An ass hath need of all his trappings. 
 
 How is it these simple words are so telling ? 
 Because the thought which informs them is vivid, 
 complete, and concise. 
 
 By two larger examples — one in prose and one 
 in poetry — I will illustrate more fully the energy. 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 117 
 
 and the poignancy, which may lie in the very 
 simplest words : 
 
 He lifted up his shining sword and stroke him so main a 
 blow as therewithal his head clave asunder ; so that he fell 
 stark to the ground. 
 
 he's gane down to yon shore side, 
 
 As fast as he could fare ; 
 He saw fair Annie in the boat, 
 
 But the wind it tossed her sair. 
 " And hey Annie, and how Annie ! 
 
 Annie, winna ye bide ! " 
 But aye the mair he cried Annie, 
 
 The braider grew the tide. 
 
 Fine thoughts are not to be caught by fine words. 
 
 Certain Latin phrases are often dragged into use, 
 and not rarely with erroneous meanings ; such as 
 ' vera causa,' ' cnox,' ' a priori,' etc. ' A priori ' does 
 not mean ' at first sight ' ; nor does it mean ' without 
 special knowledge ' : it signifies a certain method of 
 reasoning which the student is better without. A 
 ' criix ' is not a conundrum, nor an impediment, nor 
 a complexity ; still less is it an affliction : a sick 
 club may be the cross, but is not the ' criox ' of its 
 physician. A ' crux ' is a signpost, and ' a crucial 
 instance' an arm of it. What Bacon meant by 
 vera causa not even Mr. Spedding could tell us pre- 
 cisely; but he certainly did not mean efficient or 
 proximate cause. So far as philosophers use the 
 phrase, they use it in the sense of a cause capable 
 of producing some such effect, but either not known 
 to have preceded the particular effect or inadequate 
 to the full consequences : treacherous ground even 
 for philosophers. Kg. the rotation of the earth may 
 
118 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS ohap. 
 
 be called a mra causa of the wash of a river against 
 one of its banks, but this effect is probably in- 
 appreciable. Not rarely in our theses it is associated 
 with the phrase ' causa causa/ns,' which, again, is a rag 
 of medieval dialectic, and properly signifies a llrst 
 Cause. Other instances of such errors are : ' He 
 is a person of no little locus standi ' (said of a person 
 of position); 'per se ' (for ' alone ') : e.g. 'He was 
 suffering from bronchitis per se' ; ' seriatim ' (for 
 ' seriously ') : e.g. ' But seriatim, my dear G-rove, 
 seriatim ! ' Other scraps of Latin such as 'fans et 
 origo ' are often used grotesquely if not erroneously : 
 e.g. ' the fons et origo was a tape- worm ' ; or ' this site 
 of infection was the fons et origo of the illness ' — 
 the site may have been a fons, but scarcely the 
 origo. We often read, in a metaphorical sense, 
 that missionaries were sent ' in partihus infidelium ' 
 (as if to convert the heathen), a prevalent error I 
 have never seen corrected. In this sense ' partihus ' 
 would be 'partes! But a bishop in partihus in- 
 fdelium was, I regret to say, by no means an 
 evangelist, but a bishop taking his title from a land 
 so faithless that he might live at his ease in Eome. 
 Tautology. — A notion is prevalent in genteel 
 academies, and is in some favour among authors of 
 essays, that the repetition of a leading word or 
 words in a sentence, or short period, constitutes an 
 offence called 'tautology.' In this false sense of 
 tautology the mathematician might incur censure 
 for the repetition of symbols in an equation. If 
 the word first accepted be precisely the word 
 wanted, to vary it is to vary the sense, to confuse 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 119 
 
 the argument, and to vex the reader. For example, 
 an able author writes, ' The subject presented itself 
 to me in another form. ; in this way I etc. ; here the 
 reader, who has been prepared for a form, is thus 
 confronted unexpectedly with a path. In another 
 able paper I was bothered to read that 
 
 The sign x marks the beginning of, etc., etc., . . . y marks 
 the commencement of, etc., etc., ... a the occwrence of, 
 etc., etc.; 
 
 and in another : 
 
 In the first series the reaction was present on 37 occasions, 
 in the second series it occurred 32 times, while in the third it 
 was observed in 27 instcmces. 
 
 Here, for the same fonn of proposition, both the 
 words and the order of clauses are irritatingly way- 
 ward. Thus to avoid ' tautology ' is to become 
 confusing and tiresome. Above all intolerable is 
 what Henry Sidgwick used to call ' the ornate alias ' ; 
 when a church is indicated as ' that sacred edifice,' 
 an oyster as ' the succulent bivalve ' ; and so forth. 
 
 As a literary offence, tautology means not the 
 return of a particular word in proper places, but 
 an idle reiteration of meaning, a superfluity of 
 thought or word, any repetition whatsoever which 
 is ineffectual ; or again, an early recurrence of the 
 same word in a different sense. Eeiteration may 
 be a means of effect, as ' Quietly shining to the 
 quiet moon ' ; or Mark Antony's ' Tor Brutus is an 
 honourable man ' — a tremendous ' tautology.' Here 
 is a useful instance : ' That the Gothic architecture 
 of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all 
 its features, a state of pure national .faith and 
 
120 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES ohap. 
 
 of domestic virtue ; and that its Kenaissance 
 architecture had arisen out of, and in all its 
 features indicated, a state of/ etc., etc. Here, by 
 keeping to the very words, precision and sequence 
 are gained ; but note the tact which, by the in- 
 version in the second clause ('all its features 
 indicated'), avoids monotony. The iteration which 
 disfigures not scientific papers only but also the 
 larger part of public writing and speaking, is such 
 tautology as ' It gives me great pleasure (and satis- 
 faction) ' ; 'To it (alone) I shall confine myself ' ; 
 ' He was a man of great resolution (and determina- 
 tion) ' ; ' Mutual reciprocation ' ; ' We are (both) 
 agreed ' ; ' The smallest possible (minimum) ' ; 
 ' Failure (and loss of power) ' ; ' This noble (and 
 magnificent) edifice ' ; ' The glitter of weapons and 
 the flash of arms ' ; ' The noiseless (and inaudible) 
 foot of Time ' ; ' It is (owing) to this that the 
 appearance is due ' ; ' An (unfounded) calumny ' ; 
 ' (Hot and) burning words ' ; (' Fervid) zeal ' ; ' (Too) 
 premature ' ; ' (Very) extremely ' ; ' (Very) superior ' ; 
 ' More capital will be necessary, but less skill (wiU 
 be required) ' ; ' The (old) veteran showed both 
 magnanimity (of mind) and equanimity (of dis- 
 position) ' ; ' The disease is often (an) epidemic 
 (one in many instances) ' ; ' A (universal) panacea 
 for (aU) evils.' ' It was (want of) imagination that 
 failed him' is of course a blunder rather than 
 a superfluity ; as is this from a thesis on my 
 table, 'As a rule it will be invariably found.' I 
 take from a paper also before me, one almost 
 unreadable but with much fertile matter in its 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 121 
 
 muddy stream, ' In consequence of a large rural 
 population in (contra- )distinction to an urban one ' ; 
 clumsy tautology for ' a population mainly rural.' 
 Some distinguished authors, rhetorical authors 
 especially, such as those of the seventeenth century, 
 are prone to tautology : e.g. ' Infinite riches and 
 plenty, a redundancy and overflowing fulness ' 
 (Cudworth). Southey resents the passage, 'The 
 key my loose powerless fingers forsook ' for ' I dropt 
 the key.' ' The sick man disliked questions and 
 disturbance.' Kedundancy may no doubt be dis- 
 tinguished from tautology ; and in rhetoric some 
 redundancy may be a virtue. Gladstone's style, for 
 instance, was redundant, yet tautology was not one 
 of its faults ; his sentences were often heavy with 
 adjectives, but they bore no useless burdens. Blunt 
 and careless readers are apt to overlook the nicety 
 and variety of his choice, yet, even in speaking, 
 every expletive carried its own weight. Burke, 
 with more genius, was in this kind of subtlety 
 below Gladstone ; Gladstone would have been in- 
 capable of saying ' (fat) stupidity and (gross) ignor- 
 ance ' ; wherein neither adjective quite pays its 
 way; nor would Gladstone or Bright have talked 
 of ' bowing down the [stubborn] neck of their pride 
 [and ambition] to the yoke ' ; or of ' working from 
 dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, [degrading,] 
 unseemly, [unmanly,] and often [most unwholesome 
 and] pestiferous occupations.' Suspend in these 
 passages, as I have done, every word which does 
 not tell, and note how much, as written prose at 
 any rate, the sentence is lightened and strengthened; 
 
122 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS ohap. 
 
 how much more nervous it is ! If in adjectives 
 redundancy is most frequent, yet nouns substantive 
 offend also. In this example, ' His conduct pro- 
 voked neither comment nor censure,' two emphatic 
 nouns overlap. In poetry, where emotion is highly 
 strung, we are very exacting : in the line ' This was 
 thy wisdom, this thy glorious work,' we perceive 
 that a clearer poetic vision would have seen that 
 these predicates jostle each other. Emphasis or 
 impressiveness by repetition is much more skilfully 
 attained when the phrase is so changed as to set it 
 in another light ; and if the second clause be other- 
 wise constructed it is still more effective, thus : 
 
 The heathen are come into thy inheritance ; thy holy 
 temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of 
 stones. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to 
 be meat to the fowls of the air ; and the flesh of thy saints 
 unto the beasts of the land. Their blood have they shed 
 like water on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man 
 to bury them. 
 
 Here is iteration and reiteration ; but on each 
 return the idea comes back charged with a new and 
 more awful intensity {vide 'Emphasis,' p. 126). To 
 enable us to realise the intensity of this description 
 a small part of it might profitably be translated, let 
 us say into the language of the war correspondent 
 of the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 It is no doubt in imaginative or rhetorical prose 
 and verse, rather than in scientific writing, that suc- 
 cessive clauses may thus be charged with accumu- 
 lating strength or variety ; yet even in scientific 
 writing there may be a place for persuasion as well 
 
u ON COMPOSITION 123 
 
 as for force and precision. Not mere iteration then, 
 but iteration without gathering of energy or meaning, 
 is the tautology we have to avoid. It seems often 
 a little hard to cut out words which, as we wrote 
 them, seemed to be happy and effective (p. 140), 
 but which on revision we perceive to be out of 
 proportion, misplaced, or exuberant ; yet we must 
 be each of us his own severest master. E.g. in this 
 sentence, ' Then we were surrounded by a beautiful 
 mist or atmosphere of sound,' the accomplished 
 author should have sacrificed one of the words in 
 italics. 
 
 Most frequently, however, it is to a litter of idle 
 words that slackness of style is due {vide p. 91): 
 such litter as this, ' they -have made up their minds 
 as to what was the true method ' ; ' the question 
 which now arises then is this ' ; 'as to how ' ; ' as 
 to whether' {e.g. 'it is a much disputed point as 
 to whether,' for ' it is disputable ') ; 'it remains to 
 be seen in how far ' ; ' having regard to the fact 
 that,' or ' from the fact that ' (for ' as ') ; ' the 
 question as to the meaning of the theory as to the 
 involvement of ' ; 'no doubt it will be able to be got 
 rid of ' ; ' will lead to a correct conclusion (being 
 made) ' ; ' if such a property of matter can be con- 
 ceived [of] ' ; ' quite the whole of it ' or ' quite 
 entirely '; ' more preferable ' ; 'the smallest possible 
 minimum ' ; ' they are closely connected [with one 
 another] ' ; ' there was dulness found,' or ' there was 
 noticed to be impairment of resonance' {vide p. 56); 
 ' we found [that there was] an increase of acidity ' ; 
 ' to which there may be added some pain ' ; 'are 
 
124 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 impossible [of being performed]'; 'yet it does not 
 follow that it is impossible to ' (for ' it may never- 
 theless ') ; ' this palsy prevents the adduction of the 
 vocal cords [being brought about]'; ' he was attacked 
 with asthma immediately on coining into the proximity 
 of a cat' ; ' an error is being fallen into ' ; ' John 
 went out [owing to] James having come in ' ; ' this 
 requires to be made an exception ' ; ' but there is 
 a lot of doubt attached to this ' ; ' the personal 
 history gives a history of injury to the head ' ; ' a 
 short historical account of [how] the present method 
 [was arrived at] ' ; ' his position was by no means 
 [of an] enviable [character] ' ; ' regurgitation back 
 again ' ; ' later on ' (on what ? a confusion with 
 farther on — of time with place) ; ' he put us off 
 on to a wrong path ' ; 'in between,' and ' at 
 between ' ; 'at about this time ' ; ' divided q^ ' or 
 'up'; ' follow upon ' ; ' trained up to ' ; ' out of the 
 six cases there were four,' etc. ; and so on, to 
 infinity. The grotesque phrase ' signed up for ' is 
 adopted in a recent university report. ' Eather ' is 
 often redundant : e.g. ' it is better to give it up 
 [rather] than to do it unskilfully.' ' It is more 
 becoming to speak frankly [rather] than to elude 
 inquiry.' The redundancy of ands, huts, ivhiles, 
 sinces, often gives a flabby form to writing otherwise 
 good : e.g. ' sometimes we hear of this as present, 
 [and] sometimes as absent ' (vide ' Punctuation,' pp. 
 147, 148). Of useless expletives ' real ' and ' actual ' 
 (p. 106) are perhaps the most frequent: e.g. 'this 
 was the [real] beginning of the story ' ; ' when [in 
 reality] he had not spit blood ' ; ' during an [actual] 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 125 
 
 attack ' ; ' [the actual] death took place from ex- 
 haustion ' ; ' such was the [actual] cause ' (here such 
 an adjective as 'remote,' 'proximate, 'or 'immediate,' 
 may have been required, but too often such words 
 are mere padding). The following sentence is very 
 flabby, redundant, and inaccurate : 
 
 Or a theory has been believed [in], and a cause assumed 
 [to act], when [in reality] there was little or no evidence 
 of its presence ; [and] scrofula has thus been treated, and 
 considered causal in many cases where scientific evidence 
 is wanting. 
 
 It should have appeared as follows : 
 
 Or an assumption, as of a scrofulous element, has been 
 made of which there was no proof. 
 
 Frequently, however, padding is mischievous as well 
 as superfluous, as with adverbs falsely used ; such 
 as ' certainly,' ' constantly,' ' undoubtedly,' ' there- 
 fore,' ' of course,' ' perfectly,' and the like, when 
 certainty, constancy, proof, or perfection are remote 
 enough. Some expletives in common use are 
 always wrong, such as ' most constant ' (as if one 
 should say ' more square ' or ' more circular ') : e.g. 
 'the pain was most constant' (for 'incessant' or 
 ' persistent '). 
 
 Gastric ulcer is a disease constantly associated with 
 hsematemesis ; in some cases, however, there has been no 
 hsematemesis, 
 
 is a sentence which should have run thus : 
 
 In gastric ulcer hajraatemesis is freq^uent but not con- 
 stant. 
 
 The early repetition of the same word in a 
 
126 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 different sense is a very vexatious tautology : e.g. 
 ' This effect is relatively easy to effect ' ; but its 
 ineptitude is too apparent to need more illustration. 
 Emphasis. — We have seen that tautology is the 
 dissolution of emphasis, and writers who distrust 
 their own skill are wont therefore to mark emphatic 
 words or phrases by underscoring (italics). In 
 handbills, letters of business, and the like, this 
 device is well enough; indeed it may be needed 
 lor the carelessness of the reader, if not for the 
 weakness of the writer. In more formal prose, 
 however, it is a poor compliment to the reader to 
 suppose him either to be lacking in intelligence, or 
 unworthy of your pains ; for with the pains which 
 are due to him you can drive your main purposes 
 home by purely literary devices, as a conjurer 
 ' ibrces ' a card. {Vide p. 69, Times Adv. ETicyd. 
 Brit.) This end may be gained as follows : ly 
 placing the emphatic ivord at or near the beginning 
 or the end of the sentence ; by breaking the 
 customary order of the words ; by suspension ; by 
 summary ; by using some choice word — for such a 
 purpose the use of an exquisite or obsolescent word, 
 or a familiar word in an obsolescent sense, is free 
 from affectation, if the purpose be attained ; by the 
 use of the subjunctive mood when doubt is to be 
 emphatic ; by cadence, especially if the emphasis is 
 to be carried by the clause rather than by a word of 
 it ; by alliteration or assonance ; by reiteration — a 
 method much, perhaps too much, affected by Matthew 
 Arnold, — or by elusion of reiteration ; by epigram ; 
 and lastly, a subtle and effective way, by some 
 
I ON COMPOSITION 127 
 
 inversion of an order of expression in a foregoing 
 similar clause. There may be other de\rices ; I 
 have not gone beyond my own somewhat haphazard 
 notes, and these will suffice. Whoso can use these 
 means well can use all. 
 
 I have examples of some of these devices at 
 hand. 
 
 Emphasis hy position. The reader may turn to 
 many an example in the previous parts of this 
 book : e.g. p. 82, and elsewhere. 
 
 Emphasis hy order of words : ' true it is '; ' die 
 he must ' ; ' silver and gold have I none.' ' If you 
 spend the day fruitfully you will rejoice in the 
 evening' is a bad order, as the cardinal words 
 hang behind ; till you have finished the sentence 
 you have got nothing. Compare this with the 
 original (Latin) ofder, ' Vespere gaudebis si diem 
 fructuose expendas,' and note the gain ; the time 
 comes first according to the rule of syntax ; the joy, 
 which is emphatic, comes early ; next the doubt on 
 which hangs the joy, and with it the time of the 
 next clause ; finally the main condition on which 
 the joy is to be had. 
 
 Emphasis hy choice word or choice sense of a word : 
 ' After this obstreperous welcome, and this equivocal 
 display, such friendly tones were indeed grateful' 
 (note also the gain of a minor emphasis by repeti- 
 tion of ' this '). ' Beside these higher considerations 
 such an argument as that appears in its just im- 
 pertinence.' 'This I will maintain before my ad- 
 versaries, all and several.' 'Who might, instead of 
 being the benefactor of mankind, be its lane.' ' He 
 
128 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 knew better than to cast off those gyves! ' Thus 
 already the new agriculture is growing hoar.' 
 ' Expressive silence alone could jiiuse his praise.' 
 ' The minster is a great habitacle of birds.' 
 
 Em/phasis hy the subjunctive is the stronger as 
 the use of the subjunctive becomes less frequent : 
 ' This assuredly he will do, if he survive her.' 
 ' Whereby I might not call myself as wholesome a 
 morsel for the worms- as any.' 
 
 Emphasis hy cadence, gentle surprise, or epigram : 
 ' The Stoick is in the right. He forgets that he 
 can . die, who complains of misery : we are in the 
 power of no calamity while death is in our own.' 
 ' Time is an antagonist which is subject to no 
 casualties.' ' . . . how little my love of them would 
 serve me when the silence of lawn and woods in 
 the dews of morning should be completed ; and all 
 my thoughts should be of those whom, by neither, 
 I was to meet more.' The cadence here becoming 
 suddenly spondaic, brings pause and contemplation. 
 Change ' more ' into ' again,' and this quality is 
 lost. A like effect of spondaic rhythm comes into 
 my mind : ' Keeping the buttercups so 15ng waiting.' 
 
 Eviphasis hy alliteration and assonaiice is illus- 
 trated by the sentence 'how little,' etc., in the last 
 paragraph, and by many ready examples. {Vide 
 p. 143.) 
 
 Emphasis hy repetition needs no examples ; the 
 mode enters into every effective essay or oration, 
 and its somewhat excessive use by Matthew Arnold 
 is well known. A more adroit way is a manifest 
 evasion of reiteration : e.g. ' There are fungi which 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 129 
 
 have well-marked tints, but the Latin names of these 
 agarics are not pleasant ' ; — by eluding ' fungi ' on the 
 return and substituting ' agarics ' emphasis is attained 
 by an ironical pleasantry on 'the Latin names.' A like 
 example is to be seen in Sir Thomas Browne's contrast 
 of ' brain ' with ' crany ' (p. 131). 
 
 Emphasis hy epigram, humour, or irony is more 
 difficult : e.g. ' Shelley took lodgings at York, under 
 the shadow of what Shelley calls that " gigantic pile 
 of superstition " the Minster ; . . . but Hogg's 
 society made the Minster endurable' ' ; ' I am a 
 conservative, conservatism I repudiate ' ; ' Do not 
 take it au tragique, be a little insincere in your 
 sincerity.' Irony, however, needs a very light and 
 practised hand ; and young writers will do well to 
 forbear the use of it. 
 
 Emphasis hy suspension would need longer quota- 
 tions than I can afford ; they may be found readily, 
 for instance, in Thackeray. 
 
 Emphasis hy summary is to be seen in the force 
 of a short sentence at the close of a long paragraph : 
 the reader will find examples of this mode from 
 Mr. Bryce and Henry Sidgwick on p. 72. 
 
 Finally, sometimes a refined and grateful emphasis 
 may transpire in the evident cherishing of a sentence 
 or paragraph. Speaking generally, we would not see 
 the labour of the file ; but if, now and then when 
 the matter is worthy of it, by a nice handling of 
 words or turn of phrase the author betrays his 
 pleasure and a quiet alertness in his task, he pays 
 a compliment to his reader, who in his turn is 
 pleasurably affected (p. 28). A candidate writes 
 
130 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 ' bad air and scanty food dispose to tuberculosis,' and 
 I am interested at once; the indifferent candidate 
 always writes ' j^redispose.' 
 
 Umphasis hy punctuation {vide p. 146). 
 
 If emphasis is to be such as I have described, the 
 converse is true that stress must not fall upon a 
 weak word or syllable — such as a secondary pronoun 
 or adjective, or a preposition (p. 73). Thus it is 
 that usually we end the sentence with a verb, 
 which is nearly 'always a strong and animated word 
 (see p. 87 and 'Accent' p. 143). 
 
 Metaphor. — ' As a thorn goeth up into the hand 
 of a drunkard, so is a parable in a fool's mouth ' ; 
 yet as we have seen (pp. 16, 84), metaphor is so 
 intimate a function of language that to try to avoid 
 it is to try to avoid one's shadow. Few words in 
 the stream of language have been rolled quite 
 smooth — none perhaps. With the broken lights 
 of some of these gems the artist in language may 
 lay in cunningly his tints for rare and various 
 reflexions ; he may compare a lewd woman's eyes 
 to ' the cruel spiders with their crafty ginnes.' 
 With an opposite cunning the scientific draughts- 
 man seeks purer and austerer lines, yet analyse 
 and alenibicate his words as he may, their subtler 
 virtues and reminiscences will play upon him in 
 spite of himself; though metaphor, open metaphor, 
 he may, and usually will, evade. 
 
 Of the metaphorical without open metaphor the 
 following is an example: 
 
 In our study of anatomy there is a mass of mysterious 
 philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity; 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 131 
 
 yet amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I 
 find in the fabrick of man, I do not so much content myself, 
 as in that I find not ; that is, no organ or instrument for the 
 rational soul ; for in the brain, which we term the seat of 
 reason, there is not anything of moment more than I can 
 discover in the crany of a beast. 
 
 This passage, containing no definite metaphor, is 
 nevertheless far more metaphorical than the follow- 
 ing into which metaphor is deliberately imported : 
 
 It would seem as if the different impulses met in their 
 courses with an unwonted resistance to their progress, as if 
 the wheels of the cerebral machinery worked stiifly, so that 
 the lesser shocks of molecular change which otherwise would 
 have moved them, were broken and wasted upon them.^ 
 
 Indeed, a literal sentence may have an imaginative 
 value as rich as the rarest metaphor : e.g. 
 
 The grateful devotion of the Flavian family placed the 
 monogram of Christ in the midst of the ensigns of Rome. 
 
 Concerning covert metaphor, then, which clings 
 to nearly all our parts of speech we shall be choice 
 and vigilant, for the shortest metaphorical expres- 
 sions may land us in such false phrases as ' This was 
 pandering to red tape ' ; ' He discarded that state 
 of things,' ' He failed to grasp a view of the 
 subject,' or ' This was answered by the view ' ; 
 ' Events were on the wing ' ; ' The very centre and 
 hinge of the matter ' ; ' To eradicate the stamp ' ; 
 
 ' This sentence is taken from Foster's Physiology, a work 
 which I propose to the medical student for his imitation. 
 Even when its matter may become belated, it should continue, like 
 Watson's Lectures, to be a model of scientific style ; in the virtue 
 of renunciation no less than of exposition. 
 
132 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 ' Worm - eaten by rats ' ; ' Barricades in sheep's 
 clothing ' ; 'To illuminate perplexities ' ; and (but 
 the other day by a celebrated author) ' A Utopian 
 will-o'-the-wisp.' We remember Dr. Johnson's sar- 
 castic comment on ' Not one link shall be left to 
 clank upon our limbs ' — ' Sir, one link cannot 
 clank.' In very few words we may bring in 
 much false metaphor : e.g. ' The germ, the dawn, of 
 a new vein of literature.' Or, again, the metaphor 
 may be fine but out of value : e.g. ' Silence deep as 
 death ' is too great a metaphor for any moment less 
 than impending battle. 
 
 Even in the phrase of great authors metaphors 
 are too often forced ; they do not think, as I have 
 counselled on pp. 38 and 151, under the form of 
 visual conception : e.g. Burke spoke of Windsor 
 Castle as a ' temple and fortress standing inviolate 
 upon the brow of the British Lion ' ; an awkward 
 vision. If Burke's great thoughts are in expression 
 too often turgid and diffuse, we must remember that 
 they were delivered in oration, not as prose. De 
 Quincey's exorbitances, which are prose not speech, 
 have less justification. From the page of an 
 accomplished and more measured author I will 
 take a passage which I venture, however, to regard 
 as false metaphor : 
 
 The bright crystal laws of life endure like pointed stars, 
 guiding a traveller's eye to the celestial pole by which he 
 steers. 
 
 On revision, ' by which he steers ' should be deleted ; 
 for, if not pleonastic, at any rate it trails too much 
 for a 'loose ending' (p. 68); but the main point 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 133 
 
 is that the processes of life are not comparable 
 with crystals. 
 
 Furthermore, metaphors must be used with a 
 sense of unity and of relative values, lest literal 
 be mingled with figurative clauses, and vulgar, 
 grotesque, or erroneous associations creep in : e.g. 
 ' Boyle was the father of philosophy, and the 
 brother of the Earl of Cork ' ; or Burke's conjunc- 
 tion of the watch and ward of the proud keep of 
 Windsor, the crown of England, and the solemn 
 order of all Estates and Dignities of the realm, 
 with the safety of the Duke of Bedford (Letter to 
 a Noble Lord). Finally, to use metaphor with 
 imperfect knowledge is apt to lead to ' howlers ' ; 
 for instance, ' He found he had created a Franken- 
 stein,' or, ' The minister's servant was the scape- 
 goat who had caused all this trouble.' 
 
 As writers in science, theu, we shall be chary of 
 overt metaphor, though for liveliness, point, or brevity 
 we may use it now and then ; as this of Lord Orrery : 
 ' Lord Thomond is laid up with the gout. The 
 Irish hospitality has broken out in his feet ' : or, to 
 take a graver example, ' His leaf shall not wither.' 
 Such metaphors as these, if charged with no false or 
 alien notion, are as large in significance as in terms 
 they are concise. 
 
 Abstract terms. — However, ambitious figures 
 are not now a frequent fault of scientific writing ; the 
 opposite fault rather prevails, that of abstraction to 
 the degree of vapidity : thus nations are no longer, 
 they have become nationalities ; authors have be- 
 come authorities ; events eventualities ; persons 
 
134 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 personalities ; characters characteristics ; and so 
 on. I read, in a modern history, ' That nationality 
 was ultimately actually divided,' — which is not only 
 dissonant but inane. And again, ' This machine 
 has now become an actuality ' ; — i.e. the concrete 
 has evaporated into the abstract. 'This actuality 
 has now become a machine ' would be less inept. 
 A suspicious judge may sometimes be tempted to 
 think that an abstract phrase conceals concrete 
 ignorance : e.g. ' The product thus obtained has a 
 peculiar appearance.' 
 
 The propensity to write in language of too abstract 
 a quality must be guarded against as mawkish. 
 Beware, for instance, of nouns, substantive and 
 adjective, ending in ' ism,' ' istic,' and ' isation ' ; 
 scrutinise these words suspiciously, for they come of 
 a vacuous tribe. That without abstraction we cannot 
 think is true, but we think in order that after all 
 we may return more effectively upon the concrete. 
 Thus in a revise before me, 'to prove their strength' 
 is well altered into ' to prove their wings.' We 
 must not get out of touch with the body of things; 
 for as we write we are apt to think, and as we 
 think, to act, and to teach others to act ; so if our 
 thoughts fade to the ghosts of things, if our words 
 are disembodied of life and colour, we shall come 
 into action with full categories, but with empty 
 hands. ' The reader who would have wept over a 
 hard case is by a general proposition scarcely made 
 uncomfortable.' Thus in etiology we may forget 
 the complex causes of the particular instance ; 
 in our abstract terms, the poor concretion, man. 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 135 
 
 A plau of a house is a poor substitute for a home ; 
 a map is an invaluable guide, but he who knows 
 the map only wiU be a bad traveller. 
 
 Quotations. — On p. 92 I have hinted that 
 quotations should be used sparingly. We quote" 
 for two purposes, for argument and for illustration. 
 In quotations of argument the writer sets forth 
 opinions of persons of authority, that, by the support 
 of an ally, or by the confutation of an opponent, he 
 may reinforce his own thesis. When it is necessary 
 to quote the very words of an author, as a. sum- 
 mary or aphorism, or documentary evidence, the 
 passage must be repeated literally, distinguished by 
 inverted commas, and so extracted as to represent 
 fairly the context from which it is taken ; for an 
 extract, though literally accurate, may in isolation 
 misrepresent its context. Generally speaking, 
 however, it is more convenient in argument to 
 condense quoted opinions or observations into a few 
 scrupulously fair sentences. As literary graces, 
 illustrative quotations should be used sparingly ; if 
 very apt they bring the pleasure of a kind of wit, 
 but if not so happy they load the text, and arrest 
 or cross the flow of thought. Instead of hanging 
 gems about his text for the reader's admiration, the 
 accomplished author lets his opulence appear more 
 intimately and allusively, as one who writes for the 
 wise; it gleams through his prose as beautiful 
 creatures through bright water. Macaulay is a 
 notable example of this opulence in allusion ; in 
 other fine writers — as in Lamb — the accomplish- 
 ment is still more subtle and intimate. In 
 
136 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 Macaulay's Essays such passages stare from every 
 page: 
 
 The Church was now victorious and corrupt. The rites 
 of the Pantheon had passed into her worship, the subtilties 
 of the Academy into her creed. 
 
 Lamb's quality is more delicate and elusive : 
 
 Those little, lawless, azure -tinctured grotesc[ues, that 
 under the notion of men and women, float about, uncircum- 
 scribed by any element, in that world before perspective — a 
 China teacup. 
 
 Its humour apart, there is scarce a word in 
 this sentence which does not speak of various 
 fancy, delicate values, and converse with the 
 finer issues of things. But with these issues and 
 those opulences, in the prose of science we have 
 little to do ; our prose must be lucid, precise, 
 unequivocal : ornament and allusion we shall for 
 the most part deny ourselves. Clarity is our probity, 
 and our beauty. 
 
 If this be so with forcible, apt, or elegant 
 quotations, how carefully shall we avoid those 
 battered nosegays — once plucked young and fresh, 
 now wilted and sapless — which are stuck about too 
 many of our essays — as I fear on pp. 38 and 39. 
 One trembles as the sense opens to the inevitable 
 scrap of Horace or Shakespeare. We see " more 
 things in heaven and earth, Horatio " trembling 
 upon the point of the pen ! Will the author yield to 
 the temptation ? Yes, here it is ; and here too 
 is " Patience sitting on a monument " ; " Hope 
 springs eternal in the human breast " ; and " Nihil 
 humani," " Eheu ! fugaces," " Coelum non animam 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 137 
 
 mutant," etc. etc. Such quotations do not betray 
 the reading and taste of the essayist.: they are to be 
 picked up in the street by the poorest of us ; and, 
 stale as they are, are yet often misused. If adorn 
 we must, let our gems be cut from our own quarries ; 
 let us use our own excerpts with a full sense of the 
 context whence they came, and be sure that this is 
 the sense of our own context also, and a happy 
 interpretation of it. 
 
 Sound. — By some hard-headed persons it is 
 said that to compose for sound is, or may be, to 
 satisfy the ear rather than the mind; that the 
 more sensitive the ear, and the more subtly it is 
 favoured, the less may be the part of the mind in 
 the theme. It is in poetry, perhaps, rather than in 
 prose that this peril is more insidious, and with 
 poetry this tract is not concerned. But, whether in 
 poetry or prose, to say that with fine sounds to the 
 ear we may cheat the understanding, is one thing ; 
 it is another to assert that if sound and sense be 
 fine alike, the sound will so charm the ear that the 
 sense may not pass into the understanding. In 
 sweet sound and pregnant meaning the English 
 Bible and the English Liturgy are perhaps — if we 
 take them from cover to cover — incomparable ; but 
 of them the more sweetly the sound travels through 
 the ear, the more surely does the sense steal into 
 the heart. Yet I suppose for all readers, whether 
 they analyse their sensations or not, clumsy or 
 jingling or ugly prose is tedious or even intolerable. 
 The attention wanders, the patience fails. 
 
138 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 I must not tarry to amuse myself and the reader 
 with the sweet rhythms and chimes of literary 
 prose, nor even with the felicity of some scientific 
 prose; I shall be better employed in the warn- 
 ing that if we seek merely or even mainly for 
 preciousness of word our message will be barren ; 
 or, like a painted woman, even odious. When in 
 Pater or Stevenson — not the worst of such sinners 
 by any means — when even in them I see the paint 
 I am Philistine enough to close the book. Some- 
 times, even in Virgil or Tennyson, in the luscious- 
 ness of form we tremble for the substance. If, as 
 we read, we meditate first not on the bloom of the 
 phrase but on the core of the thought, the art is 
 good : if the phrase is our first charm the work is 
 a cheat ; of such is decadent art. In the sentence, 
 ' I will answer him according to the multitude of 
 his idols,' — who, as he takes this message home to 
 himself, thinks then of the words of it? Or, to 
 repeat Bright's well-known appeal : 
 
 The Angel of Death is abroad through the land ; we may 
 almost hear the beating of his wings, 
 
 who of his hearers thought then of the words ? 
 When men began to say, 'How far away it would have 
 been had the orator said the flapping of his wings,' 
 the occasion had passed. This is literature, however, 
 in which sweetness is a hardly dispensable element ; 
 scientific prose is rarely literature, rarely perhaps 
 ought to be : now and then some great work even of 
 science appears in a form which men will not forget ; 
 but ordinarily scientific language must be a vehicle of 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 139 
 
 current thinking rather than a monument of thought, 
 and it is the lot of the scientific tract to discharge 
 its burden into the stream of knowledge but itself 
 to be consigned to the cockloft. 
 
 Nevertheless, if, in saying that scientific prose 
 should run pleasingly as well as forcibly and lucidly, 
 I cannot claim for the first quality the importance 
 of the other two, yet a harmoniously written paper 
 will make its way when the same argument expressed 
 in ugly phrase, when, as Ascham says, " It doth 
 rather trot and hobble than run smoothly," fails of 
 its mark. Bad prose is bad business ; even if the 
 badness be nothing worse than ugliness. Let the 
 ear then have its way as the phrases are conned ; in 
 the ear if we will but listen for them our rougher 
 rhythms and inharmonious sounds will hang ; so that 
 we note as we read that something there was wrong, 
 we hearken for a moment, and then look back to 
 see where the jar or the limp came in, and try to 
 cure it. E.g. ' Of all I have knovm he could least 
 hold his own,' is not only an unpleasant assonance 
 but imports the alien rhythm of verse. Perhaps 
 you have written, ' recurrences of this kind are iound 
 to abound' — you read it out; your teeth are set 
 on edge somewhere ; where was it ? You look back, 
 you perceive kind, iound, and abound ; and you abate 
 the nuisance. Yesterday in a passage of delightful 
 prose this clause, ' one ■venial fault frustrated the 
 effect,' grated on my ear, though I suspect it was 
 written for its sound. 
 
 So far as sound goes, then, in scientific prose we 
 shall carry our pains so far as to avoid jingles, lilts, 
 
140 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 harsh assonances and sequences, unrhythmical clauses, 
 and so on, if not much beyond this : when we have 
 learned what to avoid we may then try to use 
 dexterously, though still very frugally, some of the 
 charms of style, such as assonance, alliteration, 
 rhythm, cadence, and harmony. 
 
 It is often hard to surrender a just and cogent 
 word because it is dissonant with some neighbour- 
 ing word which is even more indispensable ; yet 
 it generally happens not only that the dif&culty 
 may be turned but that the labour issues in a 
 more effective phrase ; e.g. in the extract on p. 2 
 I had to translate ' s'est ^mancipee et a pris la 
 robe virile,' etc. I had written ' Emancipated 
 itself and put on the robe of «iawhood ' — this jingle 
 on re-perusal was intolerable, for manYiooA was not 
 wanted to emphasise emajicipate ; but it cost some 
 minutes to hit on ' came of age ' instead. 
 
 Again, on p. 117 I had written, 'This is 
 treacherous ground even for a philosopher to treadi 
 upon,' and on revision noted the disagreeable 
 assonance of ' treacherous ' and ' tread ' ; yet to find 
 a better word than treacherous was not easy : a 
 moment later, however, I perceived that ' to tread 
 upon' was tautological, and the deletion of these 
 words while relieving the ear improved the sentence. 
 In a book before me I read, ' To maintam ' (the 
 higher life) ' agamst the slow stain of the world's 
 contagion,' etc. ' Slow stain ' is good, so for ' main- 
 tain ' the author ought to have substituted some such 
 word as ' cherish ' : yet even then the three long a's 
 are unpleasant. This kind of fastidiousness is not 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 141 
 
 peddling, no more so than a prejudice in favour of 
 the singer who sings in tune ; without a cultivation 
 of this taste our pleasure in prose or poetry would 
 be rudimentary. Yet current writing is full of the 
 viler assonances, clumsy or lilting accents, awkward 
 quantities, choppy or monotonously equal periods. 
 Surely his ear is blunt who can allow himself to 
 write ' 'Eixcept sepHc causes mt&xcept it ' ; ' Persons 
 apparently healthy frequently find a difficulty ' ; ' The 
 prepossession acts hostilely upon the iacts ' (hostilely, 
 like ' prolixly ' and ' reflexly,' is an ugly word) ; 
 ' it is supposed by some that this swmmary ' ; ' this 
 explana^ioji will not bear exaxamation ' ; ' he was 
 right when he wrote,' etc.; ' I fear it will not a.'ppear 
 nearly so clearly ' ; ' with umform formality ' ; ' a 
 defect in this res^ec^ ' ; ' probably actually ' ; ' the 
 hasig of this thesis is the cases ' ; ' teach each of 
 them ' ; ' occasionaZZy sporadicaZ/y.' These sentences 
 I cull readily from essays on my desk. 
 
 Collision of vowel sounds and other vocal hiatus 
 are often distressing : e.g. ' Maria(r) Ann ' ; ' a raw(r) 
 egg ' ; ' did I hear right ? ' (for ' aright '). ( Vide 
 p. 73.) A collision of s's is very unpleasant. 
 Some words, such as ' valuelessness,' ' reflexly,' can 
 never be tolerable and should be discarded ; and 
 all such badly balanced words must be kept out 
 of accentuated parts of sentences, such as the 
 beginning and end. 
 
 Alliteration and Assonance, which when out of 
 harmony thus jar upon us, when used harmoniously 
 are impressive or delightful. But, as I have said, 
 the paint must be invisible. In the following 
 
142 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 sentence of Sir Thomas Browne the artifice is a 
 little too apparent : 
 
 To be kna'wed out of our graces, to have our skulls 
 made drinking bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to 
 deligbt and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations 
 escaped in bwrning bwrials ; 
 
 yet the core of the invention is so impressive we 
 accept the ingenuities. The chief assonances which 
 I have marked are, however, the less obtrusive as 
 they are variously embedded in the consonants ; 
 and all the finer vowel sounds are harmonised. Yet 
 even here beauty comes perilously near counterfeit, 
 and in the following lines the peril is incurred : 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 In a dell of dew. 
 
 It would be easy to adduce many really beautiful 
 passages, say from Ruskin, which in this respect 
 overstep the limit of chastity ; less difficult would 
 it be in much recent and lauded prose to find page 
 upon page in which alliteration and assonance are sub- 
 stituted for inward significance, and with slender re- 
 ward of beauty. Addison, indeed, thought Milton's 
 
 And brought into the World a World of Woe 
 
 an affectation; but it is too superb to have a 
 conceit of its vesture, too passionate for affectation. 
 As means of emphasis such artifices as these are 
 not alien from scientific prose, especially in large or 
 conclusive periods. In the following short sentence 
 the alliteration, if not very choice, is certainly 
 emphatic ; and was no doubt intentional : 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 143 
 
 MeM of all conceivable opinions are custodians of some 
 cojistituent of truth. 
 
 Here too the vowels are all represented, in one 
 quality or another. But in another sentence — 
 ' that a reasonable time should be given to re- 
 search he readily realised,' the alliteration is bad, 
 because as the sentence is not emphatic the 
 assonance falls heavily. In conclusion, I need 
 scarcely say that alliteration and assonance are 
 not a mere reverberation of initial letters : echoes 
 may be awakened by symphonic vowels or con- 
 sonants in any succession of syllables ; the music 
 of the sentence may steal into our ears on many 
 cadences. On the other hand, trippings, jingles and 
 clinks will creep in as furtively, and must be 
 vigilantly abated. 
 
 Accent and Quantity are more important in 
 scientific and other practical exposition, and are 
 more telling than assonance. Thus in part em- 
 phasis is properly distributed, and doubt, circum- 
 spection, meditation, energy, or rapidity are signified. 
 I have quoted (p. 66) from a charming author: 
 
 The wall gave shelter to a few small birds, and to a 
 solitary man that watched them, etc. 
 
 The three long syllables 'few small birds' are 
 scarcely volatile enough, and 'solitary man' is on 
 the other hand too rapid for stillness and lone- 
 ness. I wonder if the author would accept the 
 passage thus : 
 
 The wall gave shelter to a few little birds, and to one 
 lone man, etc. 
 
 T 
 
144 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS chap. 
 
 (A bird is not small but little, and the alliteration 
 of ' little ' and ' lone ' is well.) As we read, the ear 
 is quicker than we know, or should be ; in this 
 passage — 
 
 darkness out of which you can hear the voice of the 
 night wind and the dull boom of the disturbed sea — ■ 
 
 he who can read ' disturb'd,' even to himself, 
 may be sure he has no ear for rhythm. But in 
 seeking for balance and rhythm we must beware of 
 versification ; e.g. this half pentameter ' ap-parently 
 perfectly well ' is too tripping (indeed a stout 
 monosyllable rarely ends a sentence prettily). More- 
 over a fine rhythm, if not varied in form and time, 
 becomes monotonous : the gravity of spondees may 
 degenerate into sluggishness ; the tripping of dactyls 
 into levity. 
 
 Stops. — Many authors leave the stops to the 
 typewriter, or the printer's reader ; a slovenly habit : 
 the stops should be inserted by the author himself 
 upon his manuscript, and carefully corrected by 
 him in proof. Too often typewritten theses are 
 delivered to me as they come from the machine, 
 unre vised and abounding in clerical errors ; now 
 the author is responsible to us, not the typewriter. 
 In German books, where long and ill-built sentences 
 stand especially in need of careful punctuation, the 
 use of it is even more careless than in English. 
 Commas are, generally speaking, too frequent; a 
 comma is used rather as a cheap ornament for 
 careless profusion than as a guide to meaning. 
 Originally the ' comma ' was not the mark itself but 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 145 
 
 the section enclosed by it; St. Jerome says of 
 Hosea ' Commaticus est, et quasi per sententias 
 loquens.' The mark itself indicated to the reader 
 a brief pause, the semicolon a somewhat longer 
 pause, the colon a pause longer still, and the full 
 stop a rest. Dashes are often used in place of the 
 comma; but the dash is for the interruption of 
 some demur or aside ; it is a note not of construc- 
 tion but of intercalation : like the parenthesis, it is 
 to be kept in strict subjection. Hyphens are 
 rarely wanted ; compound words are incongruous 
 with the English tongue. By the semicolon we 
 divide the longer sentences into proportionate parts; 
 but, besides this use, this stop and the colon often 
 give emphasis, even in short sentences, by bringing 
 into closer apposition some independent, or gram- 
 matically discontinuous antithesis, reinforcement or 
 illustration which, if carried over to a following 
 sentence, would have a less instant effect. Thus : 
 
 The Philistine lords command : commands are no con- 
 straints. 
 
 They have repudiated all liability : we must reconsider 
 our position. 
 
 Even the comma may have this kind of value in 
 less degree, as in 
 
 Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone. 
 
 Mr. Binyon may forgive me if in the second of 
 his fine lines I venture to insert a comma after 
 Amiata, where it seems to me to add a com- 
 templative note to the passage : 
 
 L 
 
146 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chat. 
 
 Amiata's mist apparelled head, 
 Amiata, that sailors watch on wide Tyrrhenian wave ; 
 
 as it does likewise in these words ' the wind 
 passeth over it, and it is gone.' 
 
 As a larger illustration of the functions of the 
 comma I wiU quote as follows : 
 
 then, in an hour, 
 Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound, 
 Thy foes' derision, captive, poor and blind. 
 Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves. 
 
 Note the absence of the comma in ' poor and blind,' 
 its insertion in the last line. In the following 
 lines the semicolon is well employed : 
 
 The platform is small, but gives room for them all ; 
 And they are dancing merrily. 
 
 The next quotation I give as an example of the 
 effective use of both semicolon and colon : 
 
 Fathers are wont to lay up for their sons ; 
 Thou for thy son are bent to lay out all : 
 Sons wont to nurse their parent in old age ; 
 Thou in old age car'st how to nurse thy son. 
 
 In his distribution of the stops the author will find 
 it helpful to con the sentence over, as if overheard ; 
 then he will perceive the places of the longer and 
 shorter pauses, and note them (cf. Buffon, p. 9). 
 But by stops to block out ill -distributed matter 
 into clumsy portions is bad workmanship. To trust 
 to the fallacious comma a sentence such as this, 
 ' I am a prisoner unfortunately you are my judge,' 
 might lead to a misunderstanding. 
 
11 ON COMPOSITION 147 
 
 In these and such passages the reader should 
 note that stops may take the place of coupling 
 words : a comma may often supplant ' and ' or ' but ' 
 (p. 124); a semicolon a 'therefore' or the like; 
 a colon may supplant even a short phrase, and 
 thereby give terseness and point. We may write 
 ' Courage and faith and devotion are baffled ' ; or 
 ' Courage, faith, devotion are baffled ' ; in either 
 form we impart a high note which we lose in the 
 trivial form ' Courage, faith and devotion are 
 baffled. Again, ' In my success you repudiated me : 
 will you receive me in my peril ? ' the colon avoids 
 ' now that I come to you in my peril,' etc. 
 
 As to young writers stops are nothing, so they 
 are profuse with copulatives {vide p. 124); they 
 think every joint must be oiled with ' and,' 
 ' whilst,' ' since ' ; yet there is more hope for an 
 abrupt than for a slippery style. Journalists, 
 on the other hand, for smartness' sake, will jolt us 
 with a full stop where a colon or semicolon was 
 wanted ; e.g. 
 
 There are some people to whom a walk in an English 
 wood is as exciting as a journey through a primeval jungle. 
 To whom the commonest birds and plants and flowers have 
 a perpetual touch of novelty. 
 
 Here, by substitution of full stop for semicolon, we 
 are treated to a sentence containing no verb, and 
 to an ugly jerk withal. Finally, when testing your 
 sentences never rely upon any stop or stops; for 
 the time they must be removed or disregarded. 
 Little counsels. — Do not let the abbreviations 
 
148 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 of the note-book be carried into the essay, except 
 of course in schedules and other tables. 
 
 Whether it be by the generosity of typewriters, or 
 the waywardness of manuscripts that capitals are 
 sprinkled capriciously about the pages of theses, I 
 cannot tell. Were initial capitals bestowed on nouns 
 with consistent profusion it would suffice to point 
 out to the essayist that in modern printing capitals 
 are fewer than of old. But the tiro is not only profuse 
 with them, he is utterly capricious ; his capitals are 
 bestowed without order and without discrimination. 
 Examples are needless. 
 
 Contractions. — I do not say that ' etc' is not to be 
 used, but its use should be very rare, and chiefly for 
 omission of parts of quotations, and the like. When 
 used by the author to eke out his own matter, or 
 to save himself trouble, the reader is disposed to 
 exclaim, " If you have anything more to say, pray 
 say it ; if not, finish your sentence properly : ' etc' 
 conveys no meaning at all." So in the finished 
 copy it is well to delete such contractions as ' e.g.' 
 ' i.e.' ' viz.' ; and, except of course in statistics and 
 calculations, figures look better in words than as 
 numerals. 
 
 Sometimes in citation of authors by name I am 
 asked ivhat is the test usage as to titles ? Are we 
 to say 'Eoe says such and such a thing, but by 
 Doe the contrary is asserted ' ? My advice is that 
 when we speak of living authors either of our own 
 country or well known to most of us, it is good 
 manners to do so under their proper titles ; we should 
 say ' Sir John Doe believes such and such a thing ' ; 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 149 
 
 ' Professor Eoe infers from his experiments,' etc., etc. 
 On an author's decease, and his promotion to the 
 immortality of letters, the title is dropped : we 
 speak of Darwin and Herbert Spencer ; but happily 
 still of Sir Alfred Wallace and Sir Joseph Hooker. 
 To the names of foreign authors, as a rule, we do not 
 prefix a title, even during their lives, except in the 
 case of those who are socially known to many of 
 us. Foreign investigators are for the most part 
 but names to us, and to names we owe no formal 
 courtesy. 
 
 Spelling. — I am one of those who can spell; 
 nevertheless in the matter of spelling I confess 
 myself to be in secret a libertine. Only by social 
 pressure and the printer am I held in subjection ; 
 for English" spelling is as wasteful and otiose as are 
 G-erman genders and declensions : its vagaries have 
 not the charm of symmetry, the interest of sig- 
 nificance, nor the sanction of history. I have a 
 sneaking sympathy with Lady Maria, " 'Tis well 
 enough spelt for any person of fashion." Yet even 
 so doughty a knight as Landor found custom too 
 much for single combat ; and reformers must wait 
 until some strategical move can be made all along 
 the line. Some candidates, I see, spell ' aneurysm ' 
 with an i in place oi y; to the use itself I have 
 no objection, but we must bear in mind we are 
 entering upon no trifling task. Are we prepared 
 to write also hidrophobia, dispepsia, analisis, eti- 
 mology ? Unless we are bold enough for this had 
 we not better be content with such anarchy as we 
 have ? 
 
150 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 Models. — In conclusion, the student will prob- 
 ably look to me for some advice concerning the use 
 of great prose writers as models. In this tract if I 
 have used the word ' style ' at all, it has been but 
 trivially and cursorily. On p. 9 I have said that 
 matter and form are as inseparable as skin and 
 bone; and again and again I have urged that 
 slovenly writing is slovenly thinking, and obscure 
 writing, for the most part, confused thinking. To 
 recommend ' models of style ' therefore seems to 
 me to be a counsel of mimicry, and a perpetuation 
 of fallacy. Let the student read by all means, and 
 read widely, not to imitate individual form but to 
 store his mind with ideas of thought and imagina- 
 tion, and with words in all their variety and 
 significance. Let him converse with great authors, 
 in poetry as well as in prose ; for poetry is litera- 
 ture at its highest and strongest; and almost 
 all poets — I say ' almost ' to avoid contention — 
 have written fine prose. Let him train his mind 
 also to think and imagine continuously without 
 fatigue, as he trains his body to endurance. In 
 current journalism the crafty paragraph writer is 
 but too well aware that his readers cannot think for 
 more than some half-dozen lines together — say for 
 one minute and three-quarters ; he stops therefore, 
 leaves a space with a black line across it where his 
 enervated readers may rest, and then starts off again, 
 on the same matter. The more vigorous reader, 
 supposing the matter, or one aspect of it, to be at 
 an end, lightly leaps the gap only to find himself 
 where he was before ; and so bumps his shins from 
 
n ON COMPOSITION 151 
 
 ' par ' to ' par ' of unchanged subject, where he 
 would have run on an even page at his ease. Be 
 assured there is no worse kind of ' style ' than 
 snippets. 
 
 My advice on models is then : Imitate no one ; 
 read to strengthen and enlarge your ideas, your 
 understanding, and your language ; try to build in 
 the matter you acquire with that which you had, 
 and to see it, as it were on a plan or model outside 
 yourself; observing where its features are amorph- 
 ous and its outlines faint. Thus to visualise the 
 matter of thought has become a habit with me, and 
 a very helpful one. On p. 132 is an example of a 
 concept (Burke's) unchastened by the eye of the 
 mind. In the following sentence the author had 
 not seen his thought, or he would never have 
 written : 
 
 ' If we imagine ourselves standing exactly on a pole of the 
 earth, with a flagstaff fastened in the ground, we should be 
 carried round the flagstaff by the earth's rotation. . . . 
 
 (Where was the flagstaff?) 
 
 In reading I keep near me the slips of paper 
 described on p. 11, and jot down notes on what 
 I read; not often, I admit, in the form of the 
 author but in the form his matter takes in my 
 own mind. If, with the mind thus edified, an 
 essay be made to produce for one's self; if the 
 essayist, seeing his plan in his eye, will describe 
 it precisely, cogently, and as clearly as he sees it; 
 and if he will then reduce his words and clauses 
 to their simplest and shortest forms, rejecting 
 
152 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap. 
 
 not exuberances and superfluities only but also 
 matter alien in that place, however interesting 
 in another, he wiU |find that, in the main, sound 
 matter so conceived makes sound style, and original 
 matter original style. Force, lucidity, unity, 
 simplicity, and economy of expression are virtues 
 which we may all attain ; originality will be as God 
 pleases. 
 
 Nevertheless, as we may absorb something of 
 style by watching a good cricketer or a good tennis 
 player — especially when we have made ourselves 
 so far as to know where the difficulties are, so no 
 doubt we may improve our composition somewhat 
 by setting the eye now and then for the finish of an 
 author — that is, for ease and adroitness — rather 
 than for deeper intellectual or imaginative content ; 
 furthermore, it is true that for this purpose some 
 authors are more convenient than others. I am 
 surprised, for example, to see students advised to use 
 Carlyle or Euskin for this purpose ; we might as 
 well try to model our waistcoats and our manners 
 after high priests or oriental kings. In those writers, 
 as in Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, Gibbon, 
 or De Quincey, wealth of thought and imagination 
 naturally gave birth to enrichments of form; but I 
 fear that if we take to mimicking these meteors we 
 shall become ourselves models of pretentious inanity. 
 Bacon's Essays are not for imitation — they are too 
 sententious, too aphorismal for us, and even for a 
 Lord Chancellor a little disjointed at times ; in less 
 powerful hands such a style would fall into an over- 
 wrought conciseness. If we are agreed that scientific 
 
II ON COMPOSITION 153 
 
 writers must set before themselves the simplest and 
 directest means of expression; and if we must 
 watch the manners of fine composers, let us watch 
 those in whom, as in Pascal, these qualities are 
 eminent. In literature read Dryden (who is quite 
 a modern writer), Sterne in his less fantastic pages. 
 Lamb, Goldsmith, Swift, Johnson (in Boswell or 
 The Lives of the Poets). Paley writes a style which 
 men of science would do well to take note of. The 
 prose of Newman or Church is excellent, but in- 
 fected with scholastic subtlety, i.e. by a desire for 
 system rather than truth (p. 42). Froude's prose is 
 admirable ; and it is perhaps better to know Froudean 
 history, than to know none. In another category I 
 put above all the English Bible and Liturgy ; but 
 do not heed the advice to stick to ' Anglo-Saxon ' 
 words only ; these make for terseness, simplicity, 
 and homeliness ; they make for things rather than 
 notions : still by its Latin elements our language 
 is endowed also with the swiftness, flexibility, and 
 those more abstract forms of expression without 
 which modern thought would be impossible. 
 Of writers of the day I do not propose Meredith, 
 his wit is too sophisticated ; nor Stevenson 
 who is too fastidious, nor Kipling who is — to 
 use the untranslatable French word — ' too brutal.' 
 Of such examples as come now into my head 
 are, of graver authors Jebb, John Morley, 
 Goldwin Smith, George Trevelyan, Mackail ; 
 of lighter authors Thomas Hardy and Barrie 
 come first into my memory. Of scientific and 
 medical authors read Latham, Watson, Tyndall, 
 
154 SCIENTIFIC PAPEES chap, n 
 
 Paget, Michael Foster. Huxley is too big 
 for us. These off-hand suggestions will serve as 
 guides to many another author of like merits ; 
 but when all is done, what you are your prose 
 will be. 
 
 THE END 
 
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In Eight Volumes. 8vo. 25s. net each. 
 
 A SYSTEM OF MEDICINE 
 
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 T. CLIFFORD ALLBUTT 
 
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 IV. Diseases of Liver and other Glands, Diseases of the 
 
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 VI. Diseases of the Circulatory System (continued). 
 
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