A MANUAL OF COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC: A Text-Book for Schools and Colleges. BY JOHN S. HART, LL. D., LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, AUTHOR OF A SERIES OF TEXT-BOOKS PHILADELPHIA: No. 17 North Seventh Street. A SERIES OF TEXT-BOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By JOHN S. HART, LL.D. Language-Lessons for Beginners. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by ELDREDGE & BROTHER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. J. FAGAN & BON, HARVARD FERGUSON BROS. & CO., THIS is, on the face of it, a text-book. It has been writ ten for learners, not for the learned. Its object is, not to extend the boundaries of the science by excursions into debatable ground, but to present its admitted truths in a form easily apprehended. By this statement, however, I do not wish to convey the idea that the treatise is unscientific in its character or its methods. I mean merely that I have studiously avoided cumbering my book with the many abstruse and still unsolved questions which environ the subject. Those questions are not without interest or value, and few persons have a keener relish for their discussion than the writer, whose life-long studies have been in that precise line of inquiry. But original investigation is felt to be out of place in a text-book for instruction in the elements. At the same time, it is believed, the attentive reader, who is familiar with the recent literature of the science, will find the subject brought up to the latest clearly ascertained results, while in some directions a decided advance has been made. The text has been, purposely, and most carefully, broken up into portions convenient for the uses of the class-room. These typographical arrangements necessarily give to the pages a somewhat fragmentary appearance. But any one who will take the trouble to look will see at a glance that the matter throughout is closely connected and continuous, that it forms a compacted and orderly system. Rhetoric, like grammar, arithmetic, and many kindred subjects of study, is an art as well as a science, and no textbook for the class-room is of much value which is not well furnished with examples for practice. In the preparation of the present work, no labor has been spared in this respect. In the apparatus required by the teacher for training students in the practical applications of the principles of Rhetoric, the book, it is believed, may safely challenge comparison with any work on the subject that is before the public. J. S. H. STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION. THE attention of Teachers is called to the method given on page 347 for Correcting Compositions. This method has been found to be of the greatest practical value as a means of lessening the labor of correction. Where classes are large, and the exercise is frequent, this labor is often enormous. Yet it is a labor that cannot be omitted, if the scholar is to reap the full benefit of the exercise. General criticisms are of comparatively little value. It is the minute criticism of words and sentences, in detail, that chiefly benefits the student; and to write these criticisms out in full involves an amount of labor which few teachers are willing to give. By the system of notation here suggested, this labor is lessened by at least four-fifths. |