136 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ence^ it is conclusive evidence that the supposed author did not write 

 the disputed work; if they are practically identical, the evidence is in 

 favor of the supposed author, for it is highly improbable that two sets 

 of three numbers each, taken at random, should happen to coincide, 



Following this or some similar line of thought, Mr. Hildreth ex- 

 amined the prose in fifteen of Shakespeare's plays and of Bacon's 

 'Essays' and a portion of the 'New Atlantis.' To eliminate possible 

 errors arising from careless or inconsistent punctuation, all the material 

 was repunctuated according to modern principles, x^ll inorganic and 

 broken sentences were omitted. Then follow twelve pages of figures 

 representing totals and specimen results, and then the summary. 



Summary. 



Shakespeare. 

 Bacon 



No. of Sentences 

 Examined. 



5,002 

 2,041 



No. of Words per 



Sentence. 



12.39 

 32.59 



No. of 



Predications 



per Sentence. 



1.70 

 3.45 



Per Cent, of 



Simple 

 Sentences. 



39 

 14 



The reader is left free to draw his own conclusion from these figures. 

 The closing statement is that the numbers are not presented as proof 

 conclusive, but only as contributory evidence in the controversy. 



Without wishing to deny the general principle of sentence-rhythm, 

 which, in honor of its discoverer, I shall refer to as the Sherman prin- 

 ciple in rhetoric, I wish to point out certain limitations to this prin- 

 ciple, which I think will invalidate the conclusion that must otherwise 

 be drawn from the above summary. The Sherman principle has been 

 established only for certain normal forms of composition, a fact which 

 lias been overlooked in the statement of the principle, as well as in its 

 applications. What has been shown is that a writer uses definite sen- 

 tence proportions while writing in a certain form of composition; it 

 has not been shown that he uses the same proportions when he employs 

 essentially different forms of composition, such as drama and descrip- 

 tion, criticism and correspondence. It is almost obvious that the sen- 

 tence proportions of a philosophic discourse must differ from those 

 employed in light fiction or the drama, yet this fact is not only over- 

 looked, but directly denied in Mr. Hildreth 's statement of the Sherman 

 principle. To compare the sentence structure of dramatic composi- 

 tions with the sentence structure of a heavy dissertation or description 

 ip to compare the oral utterances of a person engaged in deep contem- 

 plation or in vivid imagination of some sublime object with the com- 

 monplace talk of the drawing-room or the vernacular of the market- 

 place. Quite as plausible would it seem to assert that a man's average 

 gait in walking is the same whetlier he is out for pleasure, on business, 

 to escape from danger, or on a long journey. 



