Which essay seems to you to be most successful in structure?
3. Has the character of the audience any influence upon the structure of
the essays?
4. Compare the structure of one of Huxley's essays with that of some
other essay recently studied.
5. Has the nature of the material any influence upon the structure of
the essay?
III. Suggestions for the Study of Style.
A. Exactly what do you mean by style?
B. Questions on sentence structure.
1. From any given essay, group together sentences which are long, short,
loose, periodic, balanced, simple, compound; note those peculiar, for
any reason, to Huxley.
2. Stevenson says, "The one rule is to be infinitely various; to
interest, to disappoint, to surprise and still to gratify; to be ever
changing, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of
ingenious neatness."
Do Huxley's sentences conform to Stevenson's rule? Compare Huxley's
sentences with Stevenson's for variety in form. Is there any reason for
the difference between the form of the two writers?
3. Does this quotation from Pater's essay on Style describe Huxley's
sentences? "The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's expression
of its needs, may alternate with the long-contending, victoriously
intricate sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity of a single
word, relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look closely, you
can see contrivance, much adjustment, to bring a highly qualified matter
into compass at one view.
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