On the Sentence-Length in Engl is Ji Prose. 9 



Thus was it that the normal English prose sentence was 

 at last evolved. Everywhere the literary sense of the pro- 

 gressive, best English speakers and writers endorsed and 

 adopted it without question. And why not } It brought 

 the language of books and the language of men together, and 

 cancelled the last mischief of the Renaissance. Yet the 

 reform demanded very simple things. 'Write as you speak, 

 speak as you think ; ' or, more technically, ' Bring only a 

 single phase of the subject before the mind in separate view : 

 utter it in a simple sentence : avoid modifying clauses if 

 possible,' — these were alike its postulates and rules, and 

 they remain the essential principles of English rhetoric to-day. 

 But strangely enough these were destined to be the offspring 

 of a twin paternity. At the same time also in America was 

 a like impulse working out the same result independently, 

 through the genius of Channing.^ Though far less radical, 

 subjective, and spectacular, he is yet unmistakably obedient 

 to the same instinct of sentence thought and form, and walks 

 shoulder to shoulder with Macaulay in the new path. Both 

 are at least in earnest for reform and mean to be consistent, 

 but sometimes go far astray. Whenever they despair of 

 turning out a short, sharp sentence they are only too apt 

 to cast off all restraint and write in the old way. In spite 

 of the havoc thus made with their sentence aggregates, 

 Macaulay's average in Machiavelli is 23.65, and Channing's 

 in Self Culture, 25.42. A repunctuation of Macaulay in 

 accordance with conventional rules to match Channing would 

 raise the former aggregate to 25.10. 



But though Macaulay and Channing do not live up to their 

 privileges, the standard at least is fixed and the way to im- 



and thus allow the reader the satisfaction of perceiving the relation for himself. 

 Still Homer does not slight conjunctions : he merely avoids abusing them. 



1 Although Channing did not attract attention as a stylist until two or three 

 years after he must have read Macaulay's Milton, he had nevertheless produced 

 compositions in the same style as that of his papers on Napoleon at least fifteen 

 years earlier. See especially his Duties of the Citizen in Times of Trial or 

 Danger (1812), and War; Discourse before the Congregational Ministers of 

 Mass. (1816). 



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