lift the dome
of their Duomo. His observation discovered the secret of Rome's
architectural grandeur; and the slow accumulation of such secrets
marks the development of every art and science. Milton had his method
of writing prose, Macaulay his, and Arnold his,--all different and all
excellent. And just as the architect stands before the cathedrals of
Cologne, Milan, and Salisbury to learn the secret of each; as the
painter searches out the secret of Raphael, Murillo, and Rembrandt; so
the author analyzes the masterpieces of literature to discover the
secret of Irving, of Eliot, and of Burke. Not that an author is to be
a servile imitator of any man's manner; but that, having knowledge of
all the secrets of composition, he shall so be enabled to set forth
for others his own thought in all the beauty and perfection in which
he himself conceives it.

One thing further. A landscape painter would not make a primary study
of Angelo's anatomical drawings; a composer of lyric forms of music
would not study Sousa's marches; nor would a person writing a story
look for much assistance in the arguments of Burke. The most direct
benefit is derived from studying the very thing one wishes to know
about, not from studying something else. That the literature may give
the greatest possible assistance to the composition, the course has
been so arranged that narration shall be taught by Hawthorne and
Irving, description by Ruskin and Stevenson, exposition by Macaulay
and Newman, and argument by Webster and Burke. Literature, arranged in
this manner, is not only a stimulus to renewed effort, by showing what
others have done; it is also the most skillful instructor in the art
of composition, by showing how others have done.

It would be quite impossible for any one at the present time to write
a text-book in English that would not repeat what has already been
said by many others. Nor have I tried to. My purpose has been rather
to select from the whole literature of the subject just those
principles which every author of a book on composition or rhetoric has
thought essential, and to omit minor matters and all those about which
there is a difference of opinion. This limits the contents to topics
already familiar to every teacher. It also makes it necessary to
repeat what has been written before many times. Certain books,
however, have treated special divisions of the whole subject in a
thorough and exhaustive manner. There is nothing new t