On Decrease of Predication 3 



eating. In poetry blank verse was taken wherever practicable, 

 or at least long lines, in which verse requirements place but 

 little arbitrary restriction upon the sentence structure. Punc- 

 tuation was taken just as it was found, though it often does 

 early writers evident injustice, and puts Mandeville (p. 7) 

 among the moderns. The figures from Shakespeare are of 

 course merely provisional. It would be manifestly unfair to 

 compare truncated, dramatic dialogue, abounding in exclama- 

 tions and broken sentences, with the even flow of the IHncland 

 the Panther. In Shakespeare, therefore, only passages three 

 lines or more in length, whether in poetry or prose, were taken. 

 The uniformity of the results makes it at least safe to affirm 

 that Shakespeare appreciated the utility of simple sentences, 

 and the strength enabled by a low average of predications. 



The summary of results from the prose styles (pp. 6,7) is 

 arranged in order of decrease in average predications. It will 

 be noticed that this uniform decrease, as well as the corres- 

 ponding increase in the percentage of simple sentences, follows 

 quite closely the chronological order. While Chaucer and 

 Spenser habitually put over five main verbs in each sentence 

 they wrote, and less than ten simple sentences in each hundred, 

 Macaulay and Emerson used only a little over two verbs per 

 sentence, and left over thirty-five sentences in each hundred 

 simple. John Addingtou Symonds marks approximately the 

 highest development in studied prose, showing 1.84 verbs per 

 period, and fifty-eight simple sentences out of each hundred. 

 Styles registering as low as 1.65 verbs and as high as 65 simple 

 sentences, since found in monograph literature but not in 

 books, are excluded here. It is gratifying to find the results 

 from Grant, Everett, Blaine, and Henry James among the best. 

 The average of one-half the articles in a recent number in 

 the Forum exhibits our usual magazine style. 



The results have been made to include (p. 7,8) somewha^f 

 the development in poetry as well as in prose. Chaucer was 

 far ahead of his age in his poetry, but not in his prose. Dr 



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