SOLUTION OF A LITERARY PROBLEM. 



lO' 



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 IC! 

 Fig. 4. Shakespeare— TWO groups, about ,200,- 

 000 Words each. 



knowing what book or author was in hand, more especially on account 

 of the exceptional excess of four-letter words. 



The characteristic curve of 

 Bacon was developed along 

 with that of Shakespeare and 

 was based on his 'Henry VII./ 

 the 'Advancement of Learning' 

 and a large number of his 

 shorter essays, the total num- 

 ber of words being nearly 200,- 

 000. 



Besides these, extensive 

 counting was done from the 

 writings of Ben Jonson, Addi- 

 son, Milton, Beaumont and 

 Fletcher, Christopher Marlowe, Goldsmith and Lord Lytton and small 

 groups from a few more modern authors. It is possible, here, to give 

 only general conclusions and to exhibit the diagrams of the more im- 

 portant and interesting results. 



One of the first questions likely to be raised is, when an author 

 Avrites both prose and poetry, will the two styles of composition follow 

 the same general law and show the same characteristic curves ? Unfor- 

 tunately it is not possible to answer this as completely as could be 

 desired, as no one has written enough in two or more different styles, 

 as prose, poetry, history, essay, drama, etc., to produce normal charac- 

 teristic diagrams. Several of the authors above named were examined 

 with this point in view, and while some of them exhibited somewhat 

 different curves in play writing and in essay or serious prose composition 



in every case any marked pecu- 

 liarity found in one style was 

 also found in the other. A 

 good example of this is shown 

 in the two Shakespeare curves 

 of Fig. 5. The continuous line 

 is based on his 'Rape of Lu- 

 crece' and Tenus and Adonis,' 

 while the broken line is his 

 normal curve in play writing. 

 It will be noted that the 

 Shakespearean peculiarity of 

 an excessive use of four- 

 letter words is shown in the same degree in both and that 

 while there are apparent differences of considerable magnitude the 

 curves are really strikingly alike, every bend in on« having a correspond- 



12 3 4 



6 



7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 



Fig. 5. SlIAKESPEARK POETRY PROSE. 



