ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES

The following extracts should be carefully studied. The diction, forms
of sentences, and figures, as presented in the two preceding chapters,
may be investigated along with the further elements of style just
considered. Such questions as the following may be applied to the
selections:

What kind of discourse is it? Is it descriptive? Is
it objective or subjective? What points are
described? Is it narrative? Is it expository? By what
means is the elucidation made? Is it argumentative?
What kind of proof is used? Is the thought the chief
concern of the writer? Is the piece imaginative? Does
it abound in adjectives? Does it present pictures? Is
it stately and in full dress? What faculty
predominates? Does it glow with feeling? Does it
reach the point of sentimentalism? Does it show a
love of nature? of humanity? Do the emotions count
for more than the thought? Is it energetic or
vehement? Has the writer positive convictions? Is he
hesitating or dogmatic? Is it graceful or elegant?
Does it exhibit eccentricity or sanity? Is it smooth,
abrupt, laconic, epigrammatic, humorous, colloquial?
Are there other characteristics?

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a mouldered church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-towered mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazel-wood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.--TENNYSON.

The Normans gave way. The English pressed forward. A cry went
forth among the Norman troops that Duke William was killed.
Duke William took off his helmet, in order that his face
might be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before his
men. This gave them courage. As they turned again to face the
English, some of the Norman horse divided the pursuing body of
the English from the rest, and thus all that foremost portion
of the English army fell, fighting bravely.--DICKENS.

Poetry of late has been termed a force, or mode of force, very
much as if it were the heat, or light, or motion known to
physics. And, in tru