But
until men come to understand that Style is an art, and an amazingly
difficult art, they will continue with careless presumption to tumble
out their sentences as they would lilt stones from a cart, trusting
very much to accident or gravitation for the shapeliness of the result.
I will write a passage which may serve as an example of what I mean,
although the defect is purposely kept within very ordinary limlts--
"To construct a sentence with many loosely and not obviously dependent
clauses, each clause containing an important meaning or a concrete
image the vivacity of which, like a boulder in a shallow stream,
disturbs the equable current of thought, and in such a case the more
beautiful the image the greater the obstacle, so that the laws of
simplicity and economy are violated by it,--while each clause really
requires for its interpretation a proposition that is however kept
suspended till the close, is a defect."
The weariness produced by such writing as this is very great, and yet
the recasting of the passage is easy. Thus:--
"It is a defect when a sentence is constructed with many loosely and
not obviously dependent clauses, each of which requires for its
interpretation a preposition that is kept suspended till the close; and
this defect is exaggerated when each clause contains an important
meaning, or a concrete image which, like a boulder in a shallow stream,
disturbs the equable current of thought: the more beautiful the image,
the greater its violation of the laws of simplicity and economy.
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