The History of the English Paragraph - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. TEMPLE TO DE QUINCEY. TEMPLE. Heroic Virtue, 1692. Total paragraphs considered 184. Total words considered 28,775. Total sentences considered 538. Average words per paragraph 156.30 Average sentences per paragraph 2.90 Average words per sentence 53-40 Advancement of Trade in Ireland, 1692. Total paragraphs considered 40 Average words per paragraph 226-f Average words per sentence 54- It is probably useless to dispute whether, as Mr. Saintsbury says, Temple was a follower of Dryden, or whether, as Mr. C. D. Yonge thinks, Dryden imitated Sir William. Both men were probably indebted to Jonson, Cowley, and even Bunyan, though from Sir William's sentence-length one would hardly think so. What is certain for our purposes is that Temple's first important work, the Observations on the Netherlands (1672), is far more carefully paragraphed than the Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1667); and again that in ordering of matter Dryden's best work cannot compare with Temple's best. Temple's sentence is indeed too long; it is longer than Dryden's and more than twice as long as Fuller's. But the clauses follow the simple oral form, and for the first time in our prose we have a balance and a cadence that are not manifestly artificial. This unobtrusive balance and the parallel construction of sentences are an immense help structurally to the coherence of the paragraph. Of course the balance will now and then degenerate into an artificial pointedness that, by tending toward epigram, hurts the sequence. But the predominating effect is that of close-knit prose. Another virtue, most important historically, marks Sir William's sentences. Though long, they rarely lack unity. Temple's coherence depends very largely on structure. Of 300 sentences in the...