4. What name will you give the picture? 5. Is there any feeling that the picture brings to you? If so, what? 6. Describe the picture by using effects as far as you can. 7. Outline the points of dress mentioned in the following description: PAU-PUK-KEEWIS. He was dressed in shirt of doe-skin, Thick with quills and beads embroidered. In one hand a fan of feathers, And a pipe was in the other. -LONGFELLOW: Hiawatha. 8. Select what might be mentioned as the principal features of the dress of the then describe his dress. 9. have effects similar to this. boy in the picture, and Bring in pictures that CHAPTER X. A STUDY OF DECREASE OF PREDICATION. CAXTON AND ASCHAM COMPARED. In earlier English, the verb was made to do work on all occasions. Since then, other ways of expressing thought have come about. The result upon the length and structure of the sentence is an interesting study. Below are given another extract from Caxton's writing, and one from Roger Ascham, who was for two years the teacher of Queen Elizabeth. They wrote about one hundred years apart. I. And Dioclesian, that was their father, anon commanded them to go into a ship, and delivered them victuals for half a year. And when this was done, all the sisters went into a ship, and sailed forth in the sea, and took all their friends to Apolin, that was their God. And so long they sailed in the sea, till at the last they came and arrived in an isle, that was all wilderness. And when dame Albine was come to that land, and all her sisters, this Albine went forth out of the ship, and said to her other sisters: For as much (said she) as I am the eldest sister of all this company, and first this land hath taken; and for as much as my name is Albine, I will that this land be called Albion, after mine own name. And anon, all her sisters granted to her with a good will. STUDIES. 1. What is the average sentence length? 2. How many co-ordinate conjunctions used in clause connections? How many subordinate connectives used? 4. How many verbs (predicates) used? 5. How many 3. infinitives? 6. How many participles, not counting those used in compound tense-forms? 7. Express answers to 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 as per cents of the entire number of words used in the extract. II. If any man would blame me either for taking a matter in hand, or else for writing it in the English tongue, this answer I may make him, that when the best of the realm think it honest for them to use, I, one of the meanest sort, ought not to suppose it vile for me to write; and though to have written it in another tongue had been more profitable for my study, and also more honest for my name, yet I can think my labor well bestowed, if, with a little hindrance of my profit and name, may come any furtherance to the pleasure or commodity of the gentlemen and yeomen of England, for whose sake I took this matter in hand. And as for the Latin or Greek tongue, everything is so excellently done in them, that none can do better; in the English tongue, contrary, everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and handling, that no man can do worse. STUDIES. How many co 1. Note the sentence length. 2. ordinate conjunctions used in clause connections? Give the per cent. 3. How many subordinate connectives used? Give per cent. 4. How many verbs (predicates) used? Give per cent. 5. How many infinitives? Give per cent. 6. How many participles, not counting those used in compound tense-forms? Find per cent. 7. How would Caxton have expressed some of the above infinitive phrases and participle phrases? 8. Compare the two authors as to per cents you have found. 9. How does Ascham manage to use fewer predicates? 10. Express the following as Caxton would have expressed it: (a) "I, one of the meanest;" (b) "to suppose it vile;" (c) "I can think my labour well bestowed;" (d) "if with a little hindrance;" (e) "both for the matter and the handling." III. I. Rewrite Caxton's paragraph in your way of sentence construction. 2. How many connectives, coordinate and subordinate, do you save? 3. How many predicates do you save? 4. How many more participles do you use? 5. How many more infinitives? 6. How many more appositives? 7. How many times do you make a single word take the place of an entire clause? 8. Explain any other changes you make. 9. How many words do you save? With what per cent of the words he used do you express the same thought? IV. IO. Now compare with Hazlitt, a brilliant essayist of the first part of the nineteenth century. Note the differences in the sentence style and tell how these differences are made. ON APPLICATION TO STUDY. No one is idle, who can do anything. It is conscious inability, or the sense of repeated failure, that prevents us from undertaking, or deters us from the prosecution of any work. Wilson the painter might be mentioned as an exception to this rule, for he was said to be an indolent man. After bestowing a few touches on a picture, he grew tired, and said to any friend who called in, "Now let us go somewhere!" But the fact is, that Wilson could not finish his pictures minutely; and that those few masterly touches, carelessly thrown in of a morning, were all that he could do. The rest would have been labour lost. Morland has been referred to as another man of genius, who could only be brought to work by fits and snatches. But his landscapes and figures (whatever degree of merit they might possess) were mere hasty sketches; and he could produce all that he was capable of in the first half hour, as well as in twenty years. Why bestow additional pains without additional effect? What he did was from the impulse of the moment, from the lively impression of some coarse, but striking object; and with that impulse his efforts ceased, as they justly ought. There is no use in laboring invita Minerva— nor any difficulty in it, when the muse is not averse. STUDIES. I. State the differences in sentence structure between Hazlitt and Ascham. 2. Write the sentences in Caxton's form. 3. Explain the changes you make. |