SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION. 



373 



SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION. 



CHARACTERISTIC CURVES OF 

 COMPOSITION. 



In the Juno number of this journal 

 there appeared an interesting article 

 by Dr. Robert E. Moritz, on ' The Sig- 

 nificance of Characteristic Curves of 

 Composition,' mostly devoted to an ex- 

 amination and criticism of some con- 

 clusions stated by me in a paper pub- 

 lished nearly twenty years ago and 

 practically applied in another paper 

 published in 1901. To those who have 

 had enough interest in this somewhat 

 curious application of the doctrine of 

 chance to read all of these papers care- 

 fully no comment upon or reply to the 

 criticism of Dr. Moritz need be ad- 

 dressed, but in these piping times 

 everybody is so busy preparing his own 

 papers for the press that he has time 

 only to glance at the results of the in- 

 tellectual activity of others, and it has 

 become a common, indeed, almost neces- 

 sary habit to make a hurried hunt for 

 the conclusions of scientific investiga- 

 tions of a subject a little out of one's 

 own field and to accept them when 

 found for lack of time to do otherwise. 

 For this reason I will invite attention 

 to one or two facts having an impor- 

 tant bearing upon the question at issue. 

 The assumption of Dr. Moritz is that 

 the form of what I have called the 

 characteristic curve of a composition, 

 plotted as first described twenty years 

 ago, will depend more on what he calls 

 the form of composition (character, 

 as to subject matter, etc.) than upon 

 any personal peculiarities of the au- 

 thor. He believes this, the form of 

 composition, ' to be the predominating 

 factor overshadowing all others ' and 

 that ' conclusions regarding the author- 

 ship of spurious or disputed writings 

 based upon a comparison of the word 

 curves of work differing either in form 



(if composition or in other essential 

 respects must be considered worthless.' 

 After (not before) making these and 

 other equally sweeping assertions, he 

 sets forth the evidence by which lie be- 

 lieves they are supported. The prin- 

 cipal part of this evidence is an ex- 

 hibition of results of a series of ' word- 

 countings ' of various authors which he 

 has made, from which results he de- 

 duces the conclusions quoted above. 



Unfortunately these conclusions are 

 of no value whatever because the ob- 

 servations on which they are founded 

 are totally inadequate and, indeed, 

 are specifically ' ruled out ' in the very 

 beginning by the author himself in a 

 quotation from my earlier paper. In 

 this it was declared that a count of 

 ' 100,000 words would be necessary and 

 sufficient to furnish the characteristic 

 curve of a writer,' and yet, in the face 

 of this statement, Dr. Moritz proceeds 

 to make his sweeping deductions from 

 groups including 1,000, 5,000 (gen- 

 erally) and in the case of one author 

 two groups of 1 5,000 words each ! He 

 puts the curves of the two latter, in- 

 cluding only 30.000 words in all, by 

 the side of the Bacon-Shakespeare dia- 

 gram which includes 600,000 words 

 (not less than 100,000 being 'neces- 

 sary') and then makes the charming 

 comment upon the latter that, ' in- 

 stead of furnishing a convincing proof 

 or even contributory evidence, leaves 

 the problem of disputed authorship 

 wholly untouched! ' In this case the 

 value of the evidence depends on some 

 power higher than the first of the num- 

 ber of words, but even if directly pro- 

 portional it would be twenty in favor 

 to one against, and it is difficult to 

 believe the author serious in condemn- 

 ing so positively and confidently the 

 evidence of a ' characteristic curve ' 



