Earl of Northumberland cudgeled Henry Marten, that St. John’s manners were sullen, that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell had a red nose.”  Do men fail when they quit their own province for another?  Newton failed thus; Bentley failed; Inigo Jones failed; Wilkie failed.  In the same way he was ready with quotations.  He writes in one of his letters:  “It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much.  I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can.”  Thus we see his mind doing instantly and involuntarily what other minds do with infinite pains, bringing together all things that have a likeness or a common bearing.

It is precisely these talents that set Macaulay among the simplest and clearest of writers, and that accounts for much of his popularity.  People found that in taking up one of his articles they simply read on and on, never puzzling over the meaning of a sentence, getting the exact force of every statement, and following the trend of thought with scarcely a mental effort.  And his natural gift of making things plain he took pains to support by various devices.  He constructed his sentences after the simplest normal fashion, subject and verb and object, sometimes inverting for emphasis, but rarely complicating, and always reducing expression to the barest terms.  He could write, for example, “One advantage the chaplain had,” but it is impossible to conceive of his writing, “Now, amid all the discomforts and disadvantages with which the unfortunate chaplain was surrounded, there was one thing which served to offset them, and which, if he chose to take the opportunity of enjoying it, might well be regarded as a positive advantage.”  One will search his pages in vain for loose, trailing clauses and involved constructions.  His vocabulary was of the same simple nature.  He had a complete command of ordinary English and contented himself with that.  He rarely ventured beyond the most abridged dictionary.  An occasional technical term might be required, but he was shy of the unfamiliar.  He would coin no words and he would use no archaisms.  Foreign words, when fairly naturalized, he employed sparingly.  “We shall have no disputes about diction,” he wrote to Napier, Jeffrey’s successor; “the English language is not so poor but that I may very well find in it the means of contenting both you and myself.”

B. Recite upon some topic taken from your other lessons for the day.  Let the class tell what method of development you have used.

C. Make a collection of well-written paragraphs illustrating each of the methods of development.

+Theme XXIX.+—­Write two paragraphs using the same topic statement, but developing each by a different method.

Suggested topic statements:—­

1.  The principal tools of government are buildings, guns, and money.