CHARACTERISTIC CURVES OF COMPOSITION. 137 



Conversation' and Mill's 'Political Economy' as representatives of 

 the opposite extremes of the chain of forms of composition just de- 

 scribed, we have the following schematic types of word-curves (Fig. 2) 

 characteristic not of any particular author, but of the form of composi- 

 tion employed. 



Of course no one would expect anything more than an approximate 

 conformation to these types in any specific case, for We have already 

 stated that the form of composition into which an author casts his 



Fig. 2. Schematic Word-curves repre- 

 senting, (^4) 'Light Conversation,' (B) Clas- 

 sic Dramatic Prose, (C) Fiction, (D) Essay and 

 Description, {E) Scientific and Philosophic 

 Discourse. 



Fig. 3. Actual Word-curves, {A) Swift's 

 ' Polite Conversation,' (B) Beaumont and 

 Fletcher's Dramatic Work9, (C) Dickens's 

 'Christmas Carol,' (D) Bacon's 'Kssays' and 

 'New Atlantis' and 'Henry VII.,' (E) Mill's 

 'Political Economy.' 



thought is but one of several possible factors affecting the word-curve. 

 But Dr. Mendenhall's diagrams seem to show that it is the predom- 

 inating factor. In Fig. 3 I have superimposed on one the other four 

 of Mendenhall's diagrams, and to complete the series I have added the 

 word-curve of Swift's 'Polite Conversation.' A more striking cor- 

 roboration of our hypothesis could scarcely be expected from data in- 

 tended to establish the theory of characteristic curves. 



It may be pointed out in passing that our hypothesis explains sev- 

 eral puzzling phenomena brought out in Dr. Mendenhall's investiga- 

 tions. It is now clear why none of the thousand word-graphs from 

 Dickens's 'Oliver Twist' 'could by any possibility be mistaken' for 

 any one of ten similar graphs from Mill's 'Political Economy,' why 

 the 10,000 word-curve from Mill's 'Political Economy' varies very 

 strikingly from a similar curve from his 'Essay on Liberty' (Fig. 4). 

 It explains why the two word-curves of 10,000 words each, one from 

 'Oliver Twist,' the other from 'Vanity Fair,' agree so closely, fully as 

 closely in fact as two different curves of 10,000 words each from 

 Dickens himself (Fig. 5), an occurrence which Mendenhall remarked, 

 'must be largely the result of accident, and it would not be likely to 

 repeat itself in another analysis.' Finally our hypothesis removes all 



