excellent illustration of effective adaptation. The same thorough understanding of those addressed appears in Huxley's lectures to workingmen on scientific subjects. 5. As an example of writing which combines respect for the reader with sympathetic understanding, read the letter which Emerson wrote to a little girl of thirteen. Dean Briggs quotes it in Routine and Ideals, p. 72. 6. Do you think the demand for good form is increasing in this country? Is there anything significant in the "arts and crafts" movement, the spread of artistic house decorating, and the discussions of "a city beautiful ” ? CHAPTER VII- EXPOSITION THROUGHOUT the general discussion of our subject it has been evident that certain important differences exist within the field of composition. The material varies; the writer's purpose varies; the reader's attitude varies. And these differences result in rather distinct kinds of writing. If, then, we are to pursue our study further, we must simplify our task by taking up one kind at a time. To this end some classification is necessary. To find a satisfactory classification, however, is by no means an easy matter. For example, the usual division of all writing into exposition, argumentation, description, and narration, though convenient in many ways, is at once artificial and indefinite. However distinct these categories may be on the pages of a textbook, and however well they may accommodate a set of chosen examples, they are of doubtful service when one tries to classify the contents of some current book or magazine. The truth is that these forms rarely appear in a pure state; even a short magazine article may combine two or three of them, or possibly all four. And yet a classification based upon literary forms, novels, dramas, tales, essays, and the like, — is even less serviceable. To be sure, this follows the usage of the practical literary world; but some of these forms do not seriously concern the ordinary student of composition, and none of them can be said to include very much of the writing that he would use in meeting the demands of everyday life. Nor is a division of all writing into instrumental and æsthetic much more helpful. It has the merit of simplicity, and unquestionably rests upon sound analysis; but each of these two classes is so inclusive that a bewildering diversity of problems would confront us if we carried the division no further. ART WRIT. ENG. - 15 225 Perhaps the most satisfactory plan is to accept the old classification based on the writer's predominant purpose to explain, argue, describe, or narrate, modified by the fundamental distinction between writing that is instrumental and that which is æsthetic. Accordingly we shall take up exposition, argumentation, description, and narration in order; but in discussing each one we shall consider separately the writing which is a means to an end and that which is an end in itself. In this chapter, for example, after treating certain preliminary matters which concern all exposition, we shall study effectiveness in formal, serious exposition apart from effectiveness in the exposition which gives imaginative pleasure as well as intellectual stimulus. It must always be borne in mind, of course, that the distinctness of our division and subdivision cannot be insisted upon too rigidly. I. THE FIELD OF EXPOSITION A. THE NATURE OF EXPOSITION Of these forms of composition, exposition is the one which is concerned with explanation. It is essentially intellectual in its nature, and deals with the general rather than the particular. Whenever the writer's primary purpose is to set forth the meaning of some idea or principle, to define a conception, to show the significance of a movement, to interpret a character, to criticize a work of art, to explain some process or plan, to make clear causes and relations, to comment reflectively on what he observes about him in life, his writing is expository. He may tell how to play quarterback in football, or how to test seed corn; he may show why freshmen are laughed at, or why the government of cities in the United States has been inefficient; he may analyze Lincoln's prose style, or the newsboy as a type of character; he may comment on the lure of the city, or the rise of the country physician; he may explain the moral influence of the moving picture show, or his idea of sport for sport's sake; in every case he will write exposition. Any act of |