THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF RHETORIC.

BLAIR

A. M. WILLIAMS, M. A., GLASGOW, SCOTLAND.

VI.

QLAIR was aware of this objection, and has answered it: "Before I conclude this lecture, there is one observation which I choose to make at this time; I shall make it once for all, and hope it will be afterwards remembered. It is with respect to the instances of faults, or rather blemishes and imperfections, which, as I have done in this lecture, I shall hereafter continue to take, when I can, from writers of reputation. I have not the least intention thereby to disparage their character in general. I shall have other occasions of doing equal justice to their beauties. But it is no reflection on any human performance that it is not absolutely perfect. The task would be much easier for me to collect instances of faults from bad writers. But they would draw no attention when quoted from books which nobody reads. And I conceive that the method which I follow will contribute more to make the best authors be read with pleasure, when one properly distinguishes their beauties from their faults, and is led to imitate and admire only what is worthy of imitation and admiration.” This goes straight to fundamentals. Does any one maintain that we are to estimate all authors alike, that Shakespeare and Dekker, Milton and Glover, Shelley and Eliza Cook, are to be equally admired, or that any author, even the greatest, is always equally admirable? If not, to class one author as superior to another, or to class one portion of any author's work as superior to another, is the outcome of comparison and contrast, which are intellectual processes; and the result will be all the better if these processes are conducted on ascertained principles. What is aimed at then in the criticism of literary extracts is the development of an appreciation of the highest excellences, the development of a taste that will unconsciously select and enjoy the supremely good in literature. Such work, indeed, is essential to real appreciation of and real success in literature; few reject so fastidiously and few find such exalted pleasure in literature as Matthew Arnold, while

any great writer illustrates how much is gained by careful analysis of masterpieces. Nor is it necessary to admit that the selected passages themselves are sacrificed in order to obtain this appreciation; the intellectual attitude towards them is abandoned when its purpose is served, and there is no reason why the student should not, there is indeed all the more reason why he should, return to them with increased sensibility to their beauties.

Blair's remarks on order of words are somewhat disjointed. In one lecture he selects as the ruling principles of order, first, a natural desire to place in the front of the sentence what most strikes the imagination of the speaker. Secondly, consideration of harmony, perspicuity, etc., and compares the order educed from such principles with the ordinary English structure: in another, he recommends that circumstances should be despatched as soon as possible, and should not be crowded together; in another, that the words or members most nearly related should be placed as near to each other as possible; but he seems to have overlooked the significance of Kame's observation on the subject. Nor does he seem to have realized the value of Kame's remarks on the distribution of emphasis in the sentence; at least he professes himself unable to say what is the important place in a sentence. Number of words is treated in the same sporadic manner; here and there one finds reference made to the bearing of brevity on sublimity, strength, precision, but there is no such formal treatment as Campbell offers. Some of these scattered remarks are open to objection. For example, it is not always true that strength is secured by avoiding differences. Among other examples of the strong effect that may be produced by repetition, Dr. Bain quotes these:

"How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up,

By thirsty nothing."

"What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight;

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower."

Figures of speech are freely treated. Having defined a figure of speech as "a deviation from what may be reckoned the most simple form of speech," Blair next proceeds to classify these deviations as Figures of Imagination and Figures of Passion. He does not insist on this division, and indeed it is not very serviceable. Not only is imagination an ill-defined term, but the group

ing would lead to endless cross classification; similitudes, for example, may appeal to the intellect (which is apparently one of Blair's meanings for imagination) or to the feelings. Blair, it should be noted, says, "All comparison whatever may be reduced under two heads, explaining and embellishing comparisons," but he will not allow that comparisons are the language of passion "strong passion is too severe to admit this play of fancy." Shakespeare, however, would have supplied him with numerous contradictory instances:

"Pity, like a naked new born babe,
Striding the blast."

is certainly a figure of passion. A really good classification of figures is not easily got, though a considerable amount of order is introduced by putting together figures of similarity, figures of contrast, and figures of contiguity. This is a thoroughly sound classification so far as it goes, but it leaves out such important figures as epigram, irony, apostrophe and others. But, though he fails to hit on a satisfactory classification of figures, he succeeds in presenting an excellent account of individual figures. What he says on simile, metaphor, allegory, personification, synecdoche, metonymy, contrast, hyperbole, apostrophe, vision, interrogation, exclamation, amplification, is nearly all very good, and has been utilized by subsequent writers. They have made additions, improved the arrangement of the matter, corrected any positive error such as confounding epigram with antithesis, and supplied more copious exemplification, but, when all is done, they remain deeply indebted to Blair.

Under the sentence, Blair discusses a variety of topics, so many indeed that he fails to do justice to all of them. After a too brief handling of short and long, periodic and loose sentences, he takes up "the properties most essential to a perfect sentence," namely, clearness and precision, unity, strength, harmony. Clearness, as a quality of style, he had already spoken of, and to recur to it as a property of the sentence shows a certain lack of sound method; the rules on unity go very little beyond the point reached by Kames, and merely touch the fringe of the question. Strength in the sentence is defined as "such a disposition of the several words and members as shall bring out the sense to the best advantage; or shall render the impression which the period is designed to make most full and complete; and give every word

and every member their due weight and force." This definition leads to observation on redundancy, connectives, the placing of emphatic words and of circumstances, climax and balance; in general these observations are inadequate, but he makes one important remark, namely, that "in the members of a sentence where two things are compared or contrasted to each other; where either a resemblance or an opposition is intended to be expressed; some resemblance in the language and structure should be preserved." Kames and Campbell had recognized this construction, but Blair puts the point more neatly. Harmony, under the two heads of melody and harmony of sound and sense, receives ample consideration, but on this subject both Kames and Campbell had already written fully and well. In dealing with melody, Blair dismisses with a certain contemptuous perfunctoriness, the consideration of melody in letters and in combinations of letters, and opens his strength on the melody of sentences. On this head he has more to say of the failure of the ancient rhetoricians to reduce to a practical form their general observations as numerical sentences. He is inclined to think that the English language lends itself to musical effects less readily than the Latin and Greek languages, and that the English people attach less importance than the ancients to musical prose. Finally he concludes that the music of an English sentence is due to pauses and to the cadence of the close; to these must be added melodious combinations of letters and accents occurring not regularly, as in poetry, but at uncertain yet musical intervals. These four conditions are fulfilled in this sentence from Newman: "And now thy very face and form, dear mother, speak to us of the Eternal; not like earthly beauty, dangerous to look upon, but like the morning star which is thy emblem, bright and musical, breathing of purity: telling of heaven and infusing peace." Blair does not give any formal rules for paragraph structure, but his detailed criticism of passages from Addison and Swift is often very suggestive. Thus, he begins his examination of the Spectator, No. 411, by commending the opening sentence for laying down, in a few plain words, the proposition that is to be illustrated throughout the rest of the passage; while his remarks on the absence of connection between successive sentences suggest the rule of explicit reference and the rule against dislocation. Moreover both he and Campbell seem,

in their remarks on balance in sentences, to recognize balance as successive sentences, or what is now called parallel construction.

"All the qualities of a good style may be ranged under two heads, perspicuity and ornament. For all that can possibly be required of language is, to convey our ideas clearly to the minds of others, and, at the same time, in such a dress as, by pleasing and interesting them, shall most effectually strengthen the impressions which we seek to make. When both these ends are answered, we certainly accomplish every purpose for which we use writing and discourse. Perspicuity considered with respect to words and phrases, requires these three qualities in them: Purity, Propriety, and Precision. . . . . It appears that an author may, in a qualified sense, be perspicuous, while yet he is far from being precise. He uses proper words and proper arrangement; he gives you the idea as clearly as he conceives it himself; and so far he is perspicuous, but the ideas are not very clear in his own mind; they are loose and general; and, therefore, cannot be expressed with precision." Here Blair recognizes only one intellectual quality of style, perspicuity, of which, however, there are two degrees. In another lecture he has much to say of simplicity, but he uses the term in a somewhat comprehensive way. He takes it to mean not merely the opposite of abstruseness, but the absence of a variety of parts in a composition, simplicity of thought, the absence of pomp or ornament in language, the ease with which the language expresses the thought: thus, not only Addison and Swift, but Temple and Milton are simple. writers. Ornament includes "a graceful, strong, or melodious construction of words " and figurative language. This is another illustration of a prevailing weakness in Blair's book, the absence of sound classification: grace, strength, melody, figures, can hardly form one class. A result of the grouping is, that Blair does not do justice to the intellectual uses of figures of speech. The emotional qualities, sublimity, beauty, novelty, imitation, melody, harmony, wit, humor, ridicule, Blair calls the pleasures of taste, but he does not discuss them as a class; they are treated in various parts of the book.

With regard to sublimity, Blair does what Kames had failed to do; he distinguishes between sublimity in objects and sublimity in style. Moreover, he separates the impersonal from the personal sublime, and, though less distinctly, divides the personal