2 Carson Hildreth 



structurally consistent with themselves; that they possess a 

 certain sentence-sense peculiarly their own. These investiga- 

 tions have established that, by this instinct, authors use a 

 constant average sentence-length, and a certain determinate 

 number of predications per sentence, and that a given per cent 

 of their sentences will be simple sentences. It is further 

 shown that good writers save finite verbs, so lightening their 

 style, by the use of participles and appositional devices with 

 uniform frequency. 



Mr. Laughlin and Miss Pound have more recently added 

 their contributions, drawn from the same general field of in- 

 vestigation. They find that this law of thought and expression, 

 this sentence-sense or instinct, manifests itself by the co-ordi- 

 nation of a writer's sentences, and in other stereotyped conjunc- 

 tional uses. 



The work of these investigators covers a large amount of 

 material and a wide field of literature. They have examined 

 and compared the works of ancient and recent authors, early 

 and late writings of the same author, and writings of the same 

 author of different character, such as history and dialogue, 

 poetry and prose. The results thus far obtained are sufficient 

 to show that it is not possible for a writer to escape from his 

 stylistic peculiarities. Even should he attempt to counterfeit 

 another set of structural or literary features, he would betray 

 himself, just as in the attempt to adhere to a feigned chiro- 

 graphy, by the very incertitude of his execution. 



The intention of this paper is to apply some of these tests to 

 the writings of Shakespeare and of Bacon. In Shakespeare the 

 material comprises the prose in fifteen plays, in Bacon the 

 Essays and the New Atlantis. The examination covers 5,002 

 sentences in Shakespeare and 2,041 sentences in Bacon. The 

 tests used are the sentence-length, predicational average for 

 each sentence, and the per cent of simple sentences. The rela- 

 tive co-ordination and subordination in verbs, and other con- 



148 



