A FIRST BOOK
IN WRITING ENGLISH
The MM Co.
A FIRST BOOK
IN
WRITING ENGLISH
BY
EDWIN HERBERT LEWIS, Ph.D.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN LEWIS INSTITUTE
AND IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1897
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1897,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE
It sometimes happens that the study of the principlesof composition is left until the overcrowdedlast year of the high school, under the plea thatfacts ought to precede generalizations. Is it notbetter to have the pupil begin two or three yearsearlier than this to frame simple generalizationsfor his own future guidance? The first year studentdaily awakes to new experiences and problems.He demands rules and reasons: “How shallhe choose theme topics? How much shall heput into a sentence? Why is electrocution in badusage?” If the principle is asked for, should itnot be given—as much of it as can be digested?When such a course is followed, time enough isleft in the high school for composition to becomea habit. The complex process wherein invention,as it proceeds, is rectified by criticism, involvesmany delicate reflexes. The formulated principle,invaluable to the student in revising, in turn growsto be an unconscious factor in every succeeding actof composition.
The more essential rules ought not to be merephantoms to the boy just completing his first year[vi]in the secondary school. In regard to other mattersof living, great principles are taught him frominfancy, without the slightest fear of setting up tooanalytic a state of mind. If a boy of three may betold “always to do one thing at a time,” must aboy be eighteen before he is told “always towrite about one thing at a time”? At three thechild is required to control some of his strongestemotions; must he be eighteen before he is askedto check digressions in the paragraph? And is itpossible to implant a genuine habit of checkingdigressions except by leading the student fromparticular instances to some generalization whichhe may keep in mind as a norm for future self-criticism?Synthesis and analysis cannot safelybe separated; a good prescription for most rhetoricaldisorders is, more of both. Indeed, what seemsto be needed to-day in teaching composition is notone thing, but several: on the one hand, moreutilization of literature and more appeal to socialinterests; on the other hand, more inductions andgeneralizations by the student himself; on bothhands, more time for practice and self-criticism.
In the present book, originally printed privatelyfor my own class