Our chosen specimen of the hero as literary man [if we were to
     choose one] would be this Goethe.—­CARLYLE.

     I could lie down like a tired child,
     And weep away the life of care
     Which I have borne and yet must bear.—­SHELLEY.

     Most excellent stranger, as you come to the lakes simply to see
     their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after the
     most beautiful road, rather than the shortest?—­DE QUINCEY.

Subjunctive in Dependent Clauses.

I. Condition or Supposition.

221.  The most common way of representing the action or being as merely thought of, is by putting it into the form of a supposition or condition; as,—­

     Now, if the fire of electricity and that of lightning be the
     same, this pasteboard and these scales may represent electrified
     clouds.—­FRANKLIN.

Here no assertion is made that the two things are the same; but, if the reader merely conceives them for the moment to be the same, the writer can make the statement following.  Again,—­

     If it be Sunday [supposing it to be Sunday], the peasants sit
     on the church steps and con their psalm books.—­LONGFELLOW.

STUDY OF CONDITIONAL SENTENCES.

222.  There are three kinds of conditional sentences:—­

[Sidenote:  Real or true.]

(1) Those in which an assumed or admitted fact is placed before the mind in the form of a condition (see Sec. 215, 2); for example,—­

If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God.  If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life.—­MACAULAY.

[Sidenote:  Ideal,—­may or may not be true.]

(2) Those in which the condition depends on something uncertain, and may or may not be regarded true, or be fulfilled; as,—­

     If, in our case, the representative system ultimately fail,
     popular government must be pronounced impossible.—­D.  WEBSTER.

     If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the
     Empire, so it is also the glory of Charlemagne, the second
     founder.—­BRYCE.

     If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by
     distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. 
     —­EMERSON.

[Sidenote:  Unreal—­cannot be true.]

(3) Suppositions contrary to fact, which cannot be true, or conditions that cannot be fulfilled, but are presented only in order to suggest what might be or might have been true; thus,—­