ABSTRACT
A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. No general theory of expression seems yet to have been enunciated. The maxims contained in works on composition and rhetoric, are presented in an unorganized form. Standing as isolated dogmas—as empirical generalizations, they are neither so clearly apprehended, nor so much respected, as they would be were they deduced from some simple first principle. Avoidance of parentheses, and the use of Saxon words in preference to those of Latin origin, are often insisted upon. But, however influential the precepts thus dogmatically expressed, they would be much more influential if reduced to something like scientific ordination. The several special reasons assignable for this may all be reduced to the general reason—economy. The further superiority possessed by Saxon English in its comparative brevity, obviously comes under the same generalization.
