.

CHAPTER III.

OF ENERGY IN STYLE.

§ 319. ENERGY is that property in style by means of which the thought is impressed with a peculiar vividness or force on the mind addressed.

This property of style has been variously denominated, as vivacity, strength, and energy; all which terms, from their etymology, point at once to the nature of the property designated by them.

For the sake of clearness it will be convenient to consider this property in respect to its two species; as secured to style in accordance with the other properties, or only by a certain deviation from these properties. See § 306.

§ 320. Energy is either proper or figurative.

PROPER Energy is secured to style in accordance with the other properties;

FIGURATIVE Energy, by a greater or less deviation from them.

Without going out of the range of the other properties enumerated, it is obvious style may be more or less modified in accordance with their principles with a view to energetic effect. Such modifications, made with a view to such a vivid impression, come properly into consideration under the head of energy.

But discourse admits of modifications with a view to energy, which are not properly dictated by any principles that belong to these other properties. It is often turned from

the direction in which it would flow if those properties alone controlled it. The verbal expression of thought, as thus turned from its natural course, is termed figurative expres

sion.

§ 321. Proper Energy, like Clearness, depends on the kind and number of words employed, the representative imagery, and the structure of the sentence.

§ 322. Energy requires, in respect to the kinds of words employed, that —

Those of Anglo-Saxon origin be preferred to others; Those of national and popular use to barbarisms, whether foreign or technical; and,

The more specific to the more generic and abstract.

It is unnecessary to add to the remarks already made under the head of Clearness, § 312, in order to illustrate the truth and importance of this principle of style. It is sufficient to observe here that style admits of great modifications in respect to the kind of words habitually employed by the speaker, and that even great energy of thought may be lost in the selection of words that are wanting in this element of expression. It cannot, therefore, be too earnestly enjoined on the forming speaker to study those authors assiduously who are distinguished for their use of Anglo-Saxon, the strictly vernacular, and the specific words of our language. It will generally be found that the same taste and the same training which have led to the habitual preference of one of these classes of words, have made, also, the others most familiar and pleasing. Care should be taken to make these classes of words form the body of sound, the material in which the thoughts most easily and spontaneously invest themselves. That this is practicable is proved by the fact that men learn universally to think in the language which is spoken around them. As we have authors who are characterized by this excellence and others who abound in Latin and French

words and idioms, it is obvious the former should be habitually studied and committed to memory, while the others should be left for maturer reading. Conversation generally prefers Anglo-Saxon words. Even Dr. Johnson himself, in the familiarity and earnestness of his ordinary conversation, employed Anglo-Saxon words, which in his written discourse he unhappily translated into a Latinized dialect.* Hence the study of language as employed in common life is highly useful to the orator in this respect.

§ 323. In respect to the number of words, the principle of energy is, that the utmost brevity consistent with clearness and with the other principles of energy, be preserved.

In the application of this principle, not only redundant words and phrases are to be avoided, but also, the more direct and simple forms of expression are to be preferred to the more circuitous and prolix. Hence, often, the sentence

should be wholly recast.

The following sentences are faulty in respect to this principle:

I went home full of a great many serious reflections.

I shall suppose, then, in order to try to account for the vision without a miracle, that as Saul and his company were journeying along in their way to Damascus, an extraordinary meteor really did happen.

Neither is any condition of life more honorable in the sight of God than another; otherwise he would be a respecter of persons, which he assures us he is not.

It will often be greatly conducive to the energetic effect

* Macaulay, in an article in the Edinburgh Review for 1831, gives the following exemplifications. In one of Johnson's familiar letters he says, "When we were taken up-stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." He records this incident in his Journey to the Hebrides thus: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes he translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he said, " has not wit enough to keep it sweet; " then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

of the whole expression, after having presented the thought for the sake of clearness in a more extended form, to repeat it in a more condensed sentence.

The following extract from Burke will furnish an exemplification:

"When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precaution of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the political code of all power, not standing on its own honor, and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle."

§324. Energy requires the freest use of proper representative imagery.

No principle of proper energy is more important than this. Yet after what has been said on this element of style under the heads of Symbolical Properties, §§ 281-284, and Clearness, § 314, little need be added either to illustrate its proper character or its claims to distinct and thorough study. Effective oratory depends more, perhaps, than on any other element, on the free use of sensible images, representing abstract objects or truth to the imagination through concrete objects and scenes. In his " Art of Composition, or Proper Sentence Construction," the author has classified the various kinds of symbols of thought, and presented the principles that govern them with copious exercises. The training in style thus rudimentally commenced should be prosecuted by the diligent study of the best orators and poets, for the special purpose of acquiring a command of imagery. In this study the imagery employed should be marked, reduced to its class, worked into the memory, impressed every way on the forming mind. There should be connected with this the diligent, habitual study of sensible objects and scenes as imaging thought. The writings of Jean Paul Richter, who made this study of natural imagery a special object, are worthy of a

careful study with reference to this property of style. The books of Job, of the Psalms, and of Isaiah, are also characterized by it.

The following are exemplifications of this species of Energy:

"But while I expected in his daring flight his final ruin and fall, behold him rising still higher, and coming down souse upon both houses of parliament. Yes, he did make you his quarry, and you still bleed from the wounds of his talons. You crouched, and still crouch, beneath his rage." Burke.

"I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below.". Webster.

"When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, breathes out its longing for its distant home, what else but melancholy can be the keynote of its song?"- A. W. Schlegel.

"If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are." — H. W. Beecher.

"The world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust, and shavings, and rasps, and sand-papers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter." Id. "Because they cannot bail out the ocean with the hollow of their hand, the ocean becomes to them a thing of doubtful existence."

"The wound of conscience is no scar; Time cools it not with his wing, but merely keeps it open with his scythe." - Richter,

"In the burning-glass and magnifying-mirror of consequences, fate shows us the light, playing worms of our inner man as grown-up and armed furies and serpents." - Id.

"His hours were no more harmoniously sounded out by the chime of love and poesy, but monotonously by the steeple-clock of every-day routine." — Id.

§ 325. Energy, in the structure of the sentence, depends,

First, On the preservation of unity in the general form of the sentence;

Secondly, On the right disposition of the capital words and members; and,