LESSON 68. VARIETY. For a partial review of the field of variety—the substitution of one modifier for another, contraction, and expansion-we shall ask the pupil to look back to Lessons 14-19. Direction.-Review Lessons 14-19. LESSON 69. VARIETY. Complex sentences may be varied in form by placing the dependent clause in different positions. This clause may begin the sentence or may end it, or the leading clause may be parted, and this at several points, perhaps, and the subordinate clause inserted thus: "Charles I. cringed to Louis XIV. that he might trample on his own people." The purpose clause beginning with that may stand where it does or where the two carets are. Direction. See in how many different places the dependent clauses in the sentences of Lessons 7-11 can stand, and note the effect of changing them. To the Teacher.-See to it that in all their writing your pupils avoid the monotony we have been arraigning. Persist in this service, and your reward will be great if, at last, they attain to some mastery of that variety of expression insisted on. ENERGY MAY BE SECURED BY A SCHEME FOR REVIEW. Energy Defined. When Needed (Lesson 57). II. The Transposed Order of Words and Phrases (Les- III. Omission of Words Easily Supplied (Lesson 61). (What Parts of Speech.) IV. Idioms and Proverbs and other Quotations (Lessons 62 and 63). (The Idiom. An Idiom of Expression or Construction.) V. The Climax (Lesson 64). (Anti-climax.) VI. The Period (Lessons 65 and 66). (The Loose Sen- VII. Variety (Lessons 67, 68, and 69). (Interrogation, LESSON 70. WIT AND PATHOS. WIT.- Wit is a word once used to name our intellecttual powers-powers by which we perceive, learn, understand, think. In Hamlet's reply to Guildenstern, "I cannot make you a wholesome answer, my wit's diseased," the word is so used. In our infinitive phrase, to wit, the etymology of the word (A. S. witan, to know) determines its meaning. The supreme act of the intellect is thinking. To think is to detect an agreement or a disagreement between our mental pictures, or ideas, of things, and to judge them to agree or to disagree-the intellect affirming or denying one of the other. This relation may be between ideas that lie wide apart from each other, that are seemingly unrelated to each other. The union of such ideas in a thought excites surprise and pleasure in the reader or listener. It may even excite laughter, which is an expression of this pleasure by the muscles of the face. Indeed, to produce laughter, the laughter of derision or the laughter of good-feeling, seems to be the purpose and the effect of what we now call wit. Of the thought which causes it, we say that it is witty, or that it is humorous. Wit, then, in our modern use of the word, denotes a power in the thinker to detect hidden or pleasing relations between ideas, and it names a quality of discourse which expresses these relations. In rhetoric, we may say that WIT is a quality of style resulting from the union of seemingly unrelated ideas-a union producing surprise and pleasure. ITS USE.-Wit is not, like perspicuity, a common and necessary quality of style, since the feeling which begets it, the feeling of hostility or of mirth, is not always or often the mood of the author. But the forms which it takes and its uses and occasions are many. Often wit is belligerent, and then it strips the sheep's clothing from hypocrisy or the lion's skin from stupidity, pricks the bladders on which pretension or pomposity floats, snubs the brazen face of impudence, shoots its sharp arrows at foibles and follies and vices and meannesses and wickednesses wherever it finds them. Often wit is only sportive, genial, and humane, and, without hostility to anybody or anything, ministers to our sense of the ludicrous, our feeling of mirthfulness. Taking wit as the genus, we may, in subdivision of it, say that SATIRE is a species of wit used to lash the follies and vices of men and to reform abuses. It attacks both men and institutions. A production, long or short, into which this quality enters is called a satire. SARCASM is a species of wit used only to scourge the foibles and follies and vices of men. We call a sentence or a group of sentences into which this quality enters a sarcasm. The etymology of the word implies that a sarcastic expression tears away a portion of the flesh. RIDICULE is a species of wit which provokes laughter at its object, and thus makes it contemptible. Nothing derided, or made ridiculous, can command respect, can long stand. IRONY is a species of wit used in discourse which, taken literally, conveys the very opposite of what is intended. The words convey a compliment in the guise of an insult; oftener, as Whipple says, an insult in the guise of a compliment. Its presence in a sentence makes of it a boomerang, Lowell says. The shaft goes in a direction different from that in which it is thrown, and strikes another than the one at whom it is seemingly aimed. A burlesque is a species of witty discourse or of caricature used to take off, by ludicrous imitation, what may be dignified and proper. Things may be burlesqued not by words alone but by pictures, by gestures, by attitudes-by ludicrous imitations of all kinds. The mock-heroic is a species of witty discourse used to raise things, low or trivial, to a plane of false dignity and importance. A parody is a species of witty discourse in which the words of a production are copied in part, but the spirit of the piece is changed and lowered. A pun is a witty expression in which a word agreeing in sound with another is used in place of it. Words agreeing in sound, but differing in meaning, are called homonyms. Into a pun, not only is the homonym of some word imported, but, if there are any words which should accompany the homonym to identify it, these also are brought along to complete the incongruity and the ludicrousness of the expression. There must be consonance of sound to produce a pun, but perhaps we should qualify our definition by adding that the agreement of sound may be between a syllable and a word, between one word and a group of words, between two groups, or between one word or group and another, misspelled and mispronounced, but still capable of being recognized. The wit we have thus far been describing and defining is the wit which, in various degrees, is essentially hostile, and is used to attack and to destroy. It raises a laugh at bad men and things. It is invaluable, almost indispensable, in the discussion and the reformation of bad manners, morals, and institutions. |