laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions? Whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small-ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar,—the mother of ever new alegar; till all France were grown acetous virulent? We shall see.

170

11. And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner; doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal 175 glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and hygiène be a present aid: but, greater far, he can produce his "Report on the Penal Code;" and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Ma- 180 chine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's endeavors, gained not without meditation and reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off 185. your head (vous fais sauter la tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;" whereat they all laugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, 190 on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar's.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-167-170. Whose... virulent? Point out the figurative expressions.

171-192. And worthy... Cæsar's. Supply all the ellipses in paragraph 11.

Myleacauling

CHARACTERIZATION BY E. A. FREEMAN.

1. Macaulay is a model of style-of style not merely as a kind of literary luxury, but of style in its practical aspect. When I say he is a model of style, I do not mean that it is wise in any writer to copy Macaulay's style-to try to write something that

might be mistaken for Macaulay's writing. So to do is not to follow in the steps of a great writer, but merely to imitate his outward manner. So to do is not the part of a disciple, but the part of an ape. But every one who wishes to write clear and pure English will do well to become, not Macaulay's ape, but Macaulay's disciple. Every writer of English will do well not only to study Macaulay's writings, but to bear them in his mind, and very often to ask himself not whether his writing is like Macaulay's writing, but whether his writing is such as Macaulay would have approved.

2. I know at least what my own experience is. It is for others to judge whether I have learned of Macaulay the art of being clear; I at least learned of Macaulay the duty of trying to be clear. And I learned that in order to be clear there were two main rules to be followed. I learned from Macaulay that if I wished to be understood by others, or indeed by myself, I must avoid, not always long sentences-for long sentences may often be perfectly clear-but involved, complicated, parenthetical sentences. I learned that I must avoid sentences crowded with relatives and participles; sentences in which things are not so much directly stated as implied in some dark and puzzling fashion. I learned, also, never to be afraid of using the same word or name over and over again, if by that means anything could be added to clearness or force. Macaulay never goes on, like some writers, talking about "the former" and "the latter," "he, she, it, they," through clause after clause, while his reader has to look back to see which of several persons it is that is so darkly referred to. No doubt a pronoun, like any other word, may often be repeated with advantage, if it is perfectly clear who is meant by the noun. And with Macaulay's pronouns it is always perfectly clear who is meant by them.

3. Then as to his choice of words. Here and there I myself might perhaps think that a Romance word might well be changed for a Teutonic word. Certainly no one can charge Macaulay with what is called pedantry or purism, in a Teutonic direction, or in any direction. Still, where I might wish to change one word in Macaulay, I might wish to change ten or a hundred in most other writers. Macaulay never uses a word which, whatever might be its origin, had not really taken root in the language.

He has no vulgarisms, no newfangled or affected expressions. No man was ever so clear from the vice of thrusting in foreign words into an English sentence.

4. In short, Macaulay never allows himself for a moment to be careless, vulgar, or slipshod. Every person and every thing is called by the right name, and no other. And because he did all this, because he wrote such clear and well-chosen English that the printer's reader himself never had to read his sentences twice over, therefore men who cannot write as he could talk glibly of his "mannerism" and so forth. Everybody, I suppose, must have some manner. Lord Macaulay had a good manner, and not a bad one, and therefore he is found fault with.

5. Without, therefore, recommending any one to imitate Macaulay's manner, or the manner of any one, I do say that in all this Macaulay has left to every writer of English an example which every writer of English will do well to follow. The care which Macaulay took to write, before all things, good and clear English may be followed by writers who make no attempt to imitate his style, and who may be led by nature to some quite different style of their own. Many styles which are quite unlike one another may all be equally good; but no style can be good which does not use pure and straightforward English. No style can be good where the reader has to read a sentence twice over to find out its meaning. In these ways the writings of Macaulay may be a direct model to writers and speakers whose natural taste, whose subject, or whose audience may lead them to a style quite unlike his. In every language and in every kind of writing purity of speech and clearness of expression must be the first virtues of all.

THE PURITANS.

[INTRODUCTION.-The following sketch of the Puritans is from Macaulay's brilliant paper on Milton, first published in the Edinburgh Review for 1825. In his maturer years Macaulay thought lightly of this essay, and spoke of it as "overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful ornament." But this stricture is less applicable to the present passage than to other parts of the paper. And though it bears the marks of youth (the essay was written when the author was fresh from college), it affords an excellent study in some of the most salient characteristics of Macaulay's style.]

1. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many 5 years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were as a body unpopular; they could not defend 10 themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the

NOTES.-Line I. Puritans. The name

Puritan (from pure) arose in the

time of Queen Elizabeth as a

simpler form of faith and worship than that which was established by law.

designation of reproach (or nick- 6. the Restoration: that is, the resto

name) for those who opposed
traditional and formal usages

in religion, and advocated a

ration of the House of Stuart in the person of Charles II., 1660.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-Macaulay makes frequent use of a rhetorical instrument technically known as "obverse statement:" that is, denying the negative before affirming the positive, stating first what a person is not and then stating what he is.-Point out examples of this in paragraphs 1 and 2.

1-22. We... writers. In paragraph 1 how many sentences are there? To what type, rhetorically, do all these sentences belong? Are they generally long, or are they generally short?-Mr. Freeman states (see Characterization) that “with Macaulay's pronouns it is always perfectly clear who is meant by them." This is undoubtedly a marked excellence of Macaulay's writing; but in paragraph 1 point out an instance of a pronoun (3d pers. plural) used ambiguously.