f defective
combination:--"A modern newspaper-statement, though probably true, would
be laughed at if quoted in a book as testimony; but the letter of
a court gossip is thought good historical evidence, if written some
centuries ago." A rearrangement of this, in accordance with the
principle indicated above, will be found to increase the effect.
Thus:--"Though probably true, a modern newspaper-statement quoted in
a book as testimony, would be laughed at; but the letter of a court
gossip, if written some centuries ago, is thought good historical
evidence."

Sec. 25. By making this change, some of the suspensions are avoided and
others shortened; while there is less liability to produce premature
conceptions. The passage quoted below from 'Paradise Lost' affords a
fine instance of a sentence well arranged; alike in the priority of the
subordinate members, in the avoidance of long and numerous suspensions,
and in the correspondence between the order of the clauses and the
sequence of the phenomena described, which, by the way, is a further
prerequisite to easy comprehension, and therefore to effect.

"As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eye,
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold;
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barr'd, and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles;
So clomb this first grand thief into God's fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb."

Sec. 26. The habitual use of sentences in which all or most of the
descriptive and limiting elements precede those described and limited,
gives rise to what is called the inverted style: a title which is,
however, by no means confined to this structure, but is often used where
the order of the words is simply unusual. A more appropriate title
would be the _direct style,_ as contrasted with the other, or _indirect
style_: the peculiarity of the one being, that it conveys each thought
into the mind step by step with little liability to error; and of
the other, that it gets the right thought conceived by a series of
approximations.

Sec. 27. The superiority of the direct over the indirect form of sentence,
implied by the several conclusions that have been drawn, must not,
however, be affirmed