PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. In preparing this edition for the press, the compiler has sought to render his work more complete by adding Part VIII., supplementary to what appeared in the former editions, and particularly adapted to the wants of the more advanced students in common schools or academies. It will be found to embrace some of the more important and practical instructions found in works on Logic, and which properly belong to a complete treatise on the Art of Composition. The whole work has been carefully revised, but it was found necessary to make only a very few alterations, and those so slight, chiefly corrections of typographical errors, that no inconvenience will be experienced in using this edi. tion with any of the former. The compiler would take the liberty to add, that after a trial of one year in the institution under his care, during which several classes, in the different departments, have been carried through the work, it has been found peculiarly well adapted to the important objects for A which it was compiled. He believes it is not too much to say, that it not only embraces, but presents in a more convenient method and form, the best portions, at least the most useful, of the works of Blair, Whateley, Beattie, Campbell, and Watts, while it comprehends, besides, the Practical Exercises, the History of the English Language and Literature, and the selections from British and American Poets, with critical notices, which did not enter into the plan of any of the above works. As now enlarged, the work will, it is hoped, be deemed worthy of a general introduction into academies, while it has not thereby lost, in any degree, its adaptedness to the wants of common schools, especially in the improved condition to which they are advancing from year to year. Watertown, January 2, 1846. II. Spelling, how best learned Remarks on its Importance and Necessity III. Words to form Sentences (continued) VI. Variety of Expression (continued) VII. Words suggested to form Sentences SECT. I. Variety of Construction . III. Abridgment of Complex Sentonces IV. Abridgment of Complex Sentences (continued) V. ARRANGEMENT OF SENTENCES. SECT. I. Variety of Arrangement II. Variety of Arrangement (continued) III. Variety of Arrangement (continued) IV, Expression of Ideas V. Expression of Ideas (continued) VI. Expression of Ideas (continued) VII. Expression of Ideas (continued) PART II. I. STYLE.-II. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. PRELIMINARY CHAPTERS. CHAP. I. Of Language, and its Origin II. Alphabetic Writing III. Materials Anciently used in Writing · V. Scarcity of Books in former Times 34 34 35 35 38 37 38 39 40 VIII. SECT. I. Beauty and Sublimity in Nature 46 II. Beautiful and Sublime in Writing x. Of different kinds of Style . XV. Perspicuity in the Structure of Sentences XX. Of Sound united to the Sense XXI. Choice of Words with a View to Energy and Vivacity 76 XXII. Critical Examination of Sentences XXIX. Of Metonymy and Synecdoche XXX. Of Climax and Enuineration XXXIII. Or Interrogation and Exclamation XXXIV. Of Vision and Alliteration XXXV. Of additional Secondary Tropes . XXXVI. Of Miscellaneous Figures of Speech XXXIX. Critical Examination of Passages containing Figurative XL. Of the more General Rules for Composition OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF COMPOSITION. II. Letter-writing (continued) • 104 . 105 . . • 148 • 161 VIII. Of the Structure of Verse XI. Of Pastoral and Descriptive Poetry XII. Of Didactic and Lyric Poetry SECT. II. Examples of English Lyrics XVII. The Literary Merit and Style of the English Bible XVIII. The Form of Bible Poetry CHAP. I. Selection of proper Subjects . IV. Descriptive Essays (continued) VJ. Miscellaneous Essays (continued) HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. CHAP. I. Of different Languages . II. Of the Primitive Languages of Europe : IV. Of the early History of the English Language V. The Effect on it of the Saxon Conquest VI. The Effect on it of the Danish Conquest VII. The Effect on it of the Norman Conquest VIII. Or the Modern History of our Language IX. The same Subject continued . XI The component Parts of the English Language CAAP. I. English Literature under the Tudors and the first Stuarts 197 II. English Literature from the Restoration to the Reign of III. English Literature of the present Age IV. English Novels and Romances V, The English Periodical Press . |