SOME ÆSTHETIC PRINCIPLES
+25. Æsthetics.+ The science of beauty in general is called Æsthetics,
to which we have to look for some of the principles that are to guide
our critical judgment. Unfortunately for us, the science of beauty has
not yet been fully and satisfactorily wrought out, and the ablest
writers, from Aristotle to Herbert Spencer, exhibit great diversity of
view. There are two main theories of beauty: the one makes beauty
subjective, or an emotion of the mind; the other makes it objective, or
a quality in the external object. Without entering into the intricacies
and difficulties of the discussion, beauty will here be regarded as that
quality in literature which awakens in the cultivated reader a sense of
the beautiful. This sense of the beautiful is a refined and pleasurable
feeling; and, as we shall see, it is traceable to a variety of sources.
+26. Literary Taste.+ Literary taste is that power or faculty of the
mind which apprehends and appreciates what is beautiful and artistic in
literature. It embraces two elements: first, the apprehension of the
æsthetic quality; and secondly, an appreciation or emotional response to
its appeal. These two elements are not always equally developed in the
critic; and it frequently happens that an artistic literary production
affords exquisite pleasure without a clear apprehension of the æsthetic
elements from which the pleasure springs.
In literary criticism, as has already been shown, the standard of taste
is the ideal, developed by an application of necessary and recognized
principles, which the intelligent critic is able to form in every
department of literature. The capacity of taste is a natural gift; but,
like other powers of the mind, it is capable of great development. It is
cultivated by a study of the principles of beauty and by a contemplation
of beautiful objects in nature and art. Bad taste exhibits itself in a
failure to apprehend and appreciate what is genuinely beautiful; it
often mistakes defects for excellences. A refined taste responds to what
is delicate in beauty, and a catholic taste recognizes and responds to
beauty of every kind. The critic who would do honor to his office must
have a taste both refined and catholic.
+27. Æsthetic Elements.+ Literary beauty may pertain either to the
_form_ or to the _content_. Deferring to subsequent chapters the
elements of _external beauty_, we here consider the elements of
_internal beauty_. Though beauty of form and beauty of content may thus
be distinguished, they are always combined in works of the highest
excellence. Both alike have their source in the cultivated, creative
spirit of the writer. They cannot be effectually learned by rule; and
the best training for successful authorship is the development of the
intellectual and moral faculties.
Vividness of description is a frequent source of literary beauty.
Scenes, objects, and events are sometimes so presented as to become
visible to the inner eye. Thus Tennyson describes the flinging of
Arthur's sword:
"The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon."
Carlyle was a master of graphic description, and in a few touches he
thus brings De Quincey before us: "One of the smallest man figures I
ever saw; shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet in
all. When he sate, you would have taken him by candlelight for the
beautifullest little child; blue-eyed, sparkling face, had there not
been something, too, which said, 'Eccovi--this child has been in hell!'"
Meditative reflection, when aptly associated with circumstance or
occasion, may become a pleasing source of beauty. When employed by way
of introduction, it may, as frequently in Irving and Hawthorne, strike
the keynote of what follows. Sometimes it gives natural expression to
the vague thought or feeling that had been produced in the reader by the
preceding narrative and that would otherwise have remained unsatisfied.
In the darkness and silence of night the poet hears the striking of a
deep-toned bell. Naturally he thinks of the flight of time.
"The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss: to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours."
A meditation may, as a conclusion, impart a satisfying completeness to a
piece. Nothing could be finer, for example, than Addison's reflections
at the close of his essay on the tombs of Westminster Abbey: "When I
look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when
I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out;
when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts
with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I
consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow.
When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival
wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with
their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on
the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read
the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some
six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us
be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."
Harmony of thought and expression is another source of excellence. The
thought should be clothed in a perfect body, so that nothing can be
added or subtracted without marring the beauty. The following stanza
from Holmes's "The Last Leaf" will serve for illustration:
"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb."
When, in addition to perfect harmony between spirit and form, the sound
reënforces the sense, there is an added element of beauty. The
intellect is thus assisted in imaging or realizing the scene. As the
heroine returns to her palace in Tennyson's "Godiva,"--
"All at once
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers."
A well-known illustration is furnished in Pope's "Essay on Criticism":
"Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar."
The felicitous expression of some well-known truth or experience is
always pleasing. In its happiest form such an expression is received as
the final embodiment of its truth. It is henceforth taken up by the
multitude and quoted as having the authority of a sacred text. Pope
tells us, for example, that
"To err is human; to forgive, divine";
and also that
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
But no other English writer has equaled Shakespeare in the number of
felicitous expressions that have passed into current use. His works are
a veritable mine of jeweled phrases. We often feel, for example, that
somehow there is a mysterious power controlling our lives; and this
experience he voices in the well-known lines,--
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
Yet at the same time, recognizing the truth of human freedom, he
declares,--
"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward push
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."
High spiritual truth, in fitting expression, is a source of great
beauty. There are three great provinces of thought,--man, nature, and
God. The last is the greatest of all; and the highest achievement of
literature is to lead us to a new or fuller appreciation of his
character. As we look upon the irrepressible and unending conflict
between good and evil in this world, we are sometimes tempted to doubt a
favorable issue; but Lowell tells us, in self-evidencing words, that
"Behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
To Ruskin the various phenomena of nature brought a sweet message: "All
those passings to and fro of fruitful shower and grateful shade, and all
those visions of silver palaces built about the horizon, and voices of
moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories of colored robe and
cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, and
distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, 'Our Father, which art
in heaven.'"
Another principal source of literary beauty is found in a worthy
expression of noble thought and sentiment. This may be regarded as the
soul of enduring literature, and it is as exhaustless as the human mind
itself. The dauntless love of liberty that breathes through Patrick
Henry's famous speech is thrilling in its eloquence: "What is it that
gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but, as for me,
give me liberty, or give me death!"
Carlyle conceived of nature as the vesture of God; and, as he speaks of
the universe, this thought lifts his style to great majesty: "Oh, could
I transport thee direct from the beginnings to the endings, how were thy
eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of
celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in
the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of
God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most,
through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But
Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise,
hides Him from the foolish."
Love is a perennial inspiration both in prose and poetry. It partakes of
the divine, for "God is love." Its highest manifestations, whether in
the family, among relatives and friends, or between lovers, are always
beautiful; and perhaps Browning was not far wrong when he sang,--
"There is no good in life but love--but love!
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love;
Love yields it, gives it worth."
The portrayal of noble character is always inspiring. It appeals to the
better side of our nature, and strengthens our confidence in humanity.
No literary art can confer immortality on what is ignoble. The fiction
that is devoted to obscene realism, whatever may be the prestige of its
authors or its current vogue, is surely doomed. Only that which is
morally good is destined to live through the ages. The genial Dickens
will always be more popular than the satirical Thackeray. Boswell's
"Life of Johnson" owes its principal charm not to any trick of style,
but to the honest, rugged piece of manhood it brings before us. Only a
man of Luther's heroic spirit could have inspired this magnificent
tribute in Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Worship": "I will call this Luther
a true great man; great in intellect, in courage, affection, and
integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a
hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain,--so simple, honest,
spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another
purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and
wide into the heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green,
beautiful valleys with flowers! A right spiritual hero and prophet; once
more, a true son of nature and fact, for whom these centuries, and many
that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven."
Heroic self-sacrifice strongly appeals to us. Whenever a man or woman
gives up self for the good of others, we intuitively admire and honor
the deed. The story of Thermopylæ, the leap of Curtius into the yawning
chasm, the charge of the Light Brigade,--
"... though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered,"--
are instances of heroic self-sacrifice which the world is unwilling to
forget. There is a charm in Tennyson's "Godiva" or his "Enoch Arden"
beyond the reach of mere art; it is found in the noble spirit of the
heroine who replies to the taunt of her husband,--
"But I would die";
and in the deep self-renunciation of the hero who, in heartbreaking
anguish, prayed,--
"Help me not to break in upon her peace."
The beauty of a life of simplicity and benevolence is seen in the
immortal Vicar of Wakefield. His unaffected goodness has made him dear
to successive generations. In like manner we pay a spontaneous tribute
to Chaucer's "poure parson of a toune," and to the preacher of the
"Deserted Village":
"A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place.
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise."
The fitting description of scenes and incidents of grandeur imparts
dignity and charm to a production. Grandeur is of two kinds: first, the
grandeur or sublimity of natural objects, such as the ocean, a storm, an
earthquake, or other exhibitions of tremendous power; and secondly, the
moral sublime, in which the heroic soul rises superior to dangers and
death. Milton's "Paradise Lost" abounds in grave and sublime passages.
Byron reaches the sublime in many of the descriptions of "Childe
Harold," of which the following will serve for illustration:
"Far along
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud."
Perhaps no finer instance of the moral sublime is to be found than in
the bearing of Luther before the Imperial Diet in the city of Worms. He
was confronted by the chief dignitaries of Church and Empire. The
emperor himself, Charles V, was present. "Will you, or will you not,
retract?" solemnly demanded the speaker of the Diet. "Unless," replied
the intrepid reformer, "unless I am convinced by the testimony of Holy
Scripture or by clear and indisputable reasoning, I cannot, and will
not, retract anything; for it is unsafe for a Christian to do anything
against his conscience. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help
me. Amen!"
Another source of beauty is found in tenderness and pathos. These
feelings appeal to the gentler side of our nature. The pathos may arise
from various causes,--from bereaved affection, from fond memories, from
sore disappointments, or from helpless suffering. Every one is familiar
with Dickens's description of the death of little Nell in "Old Curiosity
Shop." Irving's story of "The Broken Heart" is deeply pathetic. The
deathbed scene of Colonel Newcome in Thackeray's great novel is notable
for its simple pathos: "At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began
to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time.
And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his
face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said 'Adsum!' and
fell back. It was the word used at school, when names were called; and
lo, he, whose heart was that of a little child, had answered to his
name, and stood in the presence of his Master."
There is a tender regret in Hood's little poem, "I Remember":
"I remember, I remember,
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm further off from heaven
Than when I was a boy."
The ludicrous often adds charm to literature. It is divided into two
species,--wit and humor. Wit consists in the discovery of remote
analogies or relations, and produces an amusing surprise. It has various
forms. In the _pun_, which is a rather low order of wit, there is a play
on the meaning of words. Punning is an art easily acquired; but a pun is
usually an impertinence to be excused only by its felicity. Hood was one
of the most ingenious of punsters; and in his ballad, "Faithless Nelly
Gray," the wit of each stanza is found in a pun.
"Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms."
_Satire_ ridicules the follies and vices of men, and is frequent in both
ancient and modern literature. Sometimes it is good-natured, but oftener
it is bitter. Swift's "Tale of a Tub" is a fierce attack upon
ecclesiastical divisions, while Pope's "Dunciad," which impales many of
his contemporary writers, almost ruined the reputations it touched.
Addison in the _Spectator_ is genial in his satire. Byron is a master of
powerful satire, and in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" he
indiscriminately lampoons his contemporaries. For example:
"Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest.
If inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a Pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ass.
How well the subject suits his noble mind!
'A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind!'"
A _parody_ is a burlesque imitation and degradation of something
serious. In his song, "Those Evening Bells," Moore wrote in pensive
mood,--
"And so 'twill be when I am gone;
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
While other bards shall walk these dells,
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells."
But in Hood's parody of the same title, this stanza is travestied as
follows:
"And so 'twill be when she is gone;
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
And other maids with timely yells
Forget to stay those evening bells."
The other principal form of the ludicrous is humor. It is wit modified
by a genial or sympathetic feeling. It has its origin in the disposition
or character, while wit springs alone from the intellect. It often
pervades an entire production. While wit generally breaks out in brief
and sudden flashes, humor is frequently diffused through an entire work
like a delicious fragrance. Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley papers in
the _Spectator_ are delightful examples of delicate humor. Hood's "Up
the Rhine" is a rich commingling of wit and humor. Dickens's "Pickwick
Papers" and Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad" are humorous works of a
broader type. Irving's minor writings are suffused with a delightful
humor. And no one who has read the humorous beginning of the "Vicar of
Wakefield" is likely to forget it: "I was ever of opinion, that the
honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service
than he who continued single and only talked of a population. From this
motive, I had scarcely taken orders a year, before I began to think
seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife, as she did her wedding-gown,
not for a fine glossy surface, but for such qualities as would wear
well."
REVIEW QUESTIONS
25. What is meant by _æsthetics_? What are the two theories of beauty?
How is beauty considered in this book? 26. What is meant by _taste_?
What are its two elements? What is said of their development? How may
taste be cultivated? How is bad taste exhibited? What is the distinction
between a _refined_ and a _catholic_ taste? 27. To what may literary
beauty pertain? What elements are considered in this chapter? Where do
we find beauty of _form_ and of _content_ united? Why is vivid
description an element of beauty? Give an illustration. How may
meditative reflection become an element of beauty? Illustrate. What is
meant by harmony of thought and expression? Give an example. How may
sound reënforce the sense? Illustrate. What is said about felicitous
expression? What writers excel in felicity of expression? Illustrate.
What is said of high spiritual truth? Name the three great provinces of
thought. What does Lowell think of the evils in the world? What does
Ruskin say of the phenomena of nature? What is said of noble thought and
sentiment? What makes Patrick Henry's speech thrilling? How did Carlyle
conceive of nature? What is said of love in literature? What is
Browning's idea? What is the effect of portraying noble character? What
is said of obscene realism? To what does Boswell's "Life of Johnson" owe
its principal charm? What does Carlyle say of Luther? What is said of
heroic self-sacrifice? Illustrate. Where do we see the beauty of simple
goodness portrayed? What is the effect of the fitting portrayal of
grandeur? What two kinds of grandeur are distinguished? Mention some
objects of natural grandeur. Illustrate from Byron. Give an illustration
of the moral sublime. To what does pathos appeal? Illustrate. Repeat the
quotation from Hood. What two species of the _ludicrous_ are
distinguished? What is _wit_? What is a _pun_? Illustrate. What is
_satire_? What are the two kinds of satire? Give an illustration. What
is a _parody_? Illustrate. How does _humor_ differ from _wit_? Give an
example of humor.
ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES
The following extracts should be carefully studied for the purpose of
determining their elements of _internal excellence or beauty_. They
should be tested by such questions as these:
Is the extract descriptive or meditative? What gives
vividness to the description? What points are brought
out in the meditation? What is the main thought or
feeling presented? Does it pertain to man, nature, or
God? What phases of nature are considered? What
element of character is set forth? Is there dignity
or felicity of expression? Is grandeur portrayed? Is
it physical or moral? Is there tenderness or pathos?
What gives it this element? Is there art or humor?
What kind of wit? What is the chief source of beauty?
A man from Maine, who had never paid more than twenty-five
cents for admission to an entertainment, went to a New York
theatre where the play was "The Forty Thieves," and was
charged a dollar and a half for a ticket. Handing the
pasteboard back, he remarked, "Keep it, Mister; I don't want
to see the other thirty-nine."--ANON.
OLD IRONSIDES
O better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale.--HOLMES.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have
not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and
understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have
all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not
charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to
feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and
have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.--PAUL.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him! Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught,
But now and then with pressure of his thumb,
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,
That fumes beneath his nose; the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.--COWPER.
Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every error, covers every
defect, extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom
spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can
look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a
compunctious throb that he should ever have warred with the
poor handful of earth that lies moldering before him? But the
grave of those we loved,--what a place for meditation! There
it is we call up, in long review, the whole history of virtue
and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us,
almost unheeded, in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there
it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful
tenderness of the parting scene.--IRVING.
JOAN OF ARC
The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from
below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose up in billowy columns.
A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped
up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still
persisted in his prayers. Even then when the last enemy was
racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment
did this noblest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend
that would not forsake her, and not herself; bidding him with
her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave
_her_ to God.--DE QUINCEY.
O, lay thy hand in mine, dear!
We're growing old;
But Time hath brought no sign, dear,
That hearts grow cold.
'Tis long, long since our new love
Made life divine;
But age enricheth true love,
Like noble wine.--MASSEY.
The noon-day sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La
Ricca, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose
autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand
evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot
call it color, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and
scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing
trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate
leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it
turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch
and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley,
the green vistas, arched like the hollows of mighty waves of
some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along
their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray
tossed into the air around them, breaking over the gray walls
of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling
alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them
fall.--RUSKIN.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He's ben on all sides that give places or pelf,
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,--
He's been true to _one_ party,--and thet is himself;
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote for Gineral C.
Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud;
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote for Gineral C.--LOWELL.
WOMAN
Not she with traitorous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue;
She, while apostles shrank, could dangers brave,
Last at the cross and earliest at the grave.--BARRETT.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.--TENNYSON.
No nation which did not contemplate this wonderful universe
with an awe-stricken and reverential belief that there was a
great unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise and all-just Being,
superintending all men in it, and all interests in it--no
nation ever came to very much, nor did any man either, who
forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot the most
important part of his mission in this world.--CARLYLE.
GOLDSMITH
Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like--but
merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes
out of our life and goes to render his account beyond it.
Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of
the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the
righteous pen that wrote his epitaph--and the wonderful and
unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid
the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still; his song
fresh and beautiful as when he first charmed with it; his
words in all our mouths; his very weaknesses beloved and
familiar--his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us;
to do gentle kindnesses; to succor with sweet charity; to
caress, to soothe, and forgive; to plead with the fortunate
for the unhappy and the poor--THACKERAY.
We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied,--
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came, dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed,--she had
Another morn than ours.--HOOD.
NOTE
In addition to the foregoing extracts, those appended to the previous
chapters may be examined again with the special view of discovering
their æsthetic elements. Furthermore, the student may be required to
study complete works--such as Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," Burns's
"Cotter's Saturday Night," Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," Scott's "Ivanhoe,"
Dickens's "David Copperfield," and others that will occur to the
teacher--in order to discover the beauties of description, meditation,
thought, sentiment, character, and other æsthetic elements awakening
pleasure and imparting excellence. The results may be presented either
orally or in writing.
PART SECOND
RHETORICAL ELEMENTS