Elements of Rhetoric and Literary Criticism

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
04.7*172

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York

ACE

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 edition 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

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.

CON TEN TS.

PAELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

PART I.

I. SPELLING.
SECT. I. Capital Letters
II. Spelling, how best learned

II. PUNCTUATION,
Remarks on its Importance and Necessity

III. USE OF WORDS.
Sect. I. Elliptical Sentences

II. Words to form Sentences
III. Words to form Sentences (continued)
IV. Derivative Words
V. Variety of Expression
VI. Variety of Expression (continued)
VII. Words suggested to form Sentences

IV. STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES.
SECT. I. Variety of Construction

II. Simple Sentences
III. Abridgment of Complex Sentences
IV. Abridgment of Complex Sentences (continued)
V. Variety of Structure
VI. Variety of Structure and Expression
VII. Complex Sentences
VIII. Ideas suggested to formi Sentences

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)