Sentences. Words alone are not a sufficient possession. They must be known in all their relations. A comprehension of the structure of the sentence is always necessary. A sentence is a unit of thought, an idea reduced to its lowest terms. It may not be necessary that each sentence be analyzed strictly by grammatical rules, but it is essential that the reader should recognize by study if necessary the subject and the predicate and the character and rank of all the modifiers of each. Even the practiced reader by unconsciously laying undue prominence upon some minor phrase frequently modifies the meaning an author intends to convey. This is particularly true in verse, where the poet, hemmed in by the rules that govern his meter and his rhyme, varies the natural order of the elements of a sentence to bring the accents where they belong or to throw the rhyming word to the end of a verse. The grouping of related sentences into paragraphs is an aid to the reader and should be noticed by him till the habit of expecting a slight change in thought with the indentation of a line becomes fixed and automatic.
Allusions. But one may have the most perfect knowledge of all the words, his comprehension of the meaning of the sentence may be exact and full, and yet the special thought which the expression carries may never reach his mind. Ruskin writes: “Gather a single blade of grass and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow swordshaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems, there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point—not a perfect point either, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much cared for example of Nature’s workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on today, and tomorrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for food—stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron burdened vine—there be any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced as that narrow point of feeble green.” Words and sentences are all plain and simple and clear. Perhaps we pause a moment at “scented citron,” for the citron as we know it is a vine bearing a melonlike fruit and we are not aware that it is especially fragrant. But this is another plant—a tree that bears a sweet-scented fruit not unlike the lemon. “Burdened vine” seems a trifle obscure—why burdened vine? A vine carrying a weight? What weight? The ripened clusters of purple fruit bending the swaying vines to the warm earth while autumn tints the leaves to harmonious colors. “Burdened vine” is a suggestive expression indeed to the person of a little imagination who has walked through the long aisles of a thriving vineyard. Is the passage now clear to us and perfectly understood? Does it convey to us what Ruskin really thought?—“Tomorrow to be cast into the oven.” What a strange expression! Do we put grass into an oven? How came Ruskin to mention such a thing? “To be cast into the oven.” We have seen “burdened vines” and we understand the “scented citron,” but what of this grass “cast into the oven”? Back in the mind of the artist-critic lie the lessons of his childhood when an ambitious father and a strict mother intended him for the church and trained him carefully to a close and accurate knowledge of the scriptures. So when he writes of the grass of the field he almost unconsciously uses the language of the bible: “Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” We his readers interpret his feelings and his meaning in this only as we have learned the same lessons.
Examples of such allusions abound throughout literature. In The Vision of Sir Launfal, Lowell says:
“Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.”
With a knowledge of geography we might locate the mountain and understand the sentence, but the tremendous power of the lines can never be felt unless we know the story of Moses and so realize that we stand every day like the patriarch of old in the very presence of God himself.
The mythology of Greece and Rome furnishes to English literature allusions so pointed, so vivid, and so full of beautiful suggestion that a knowledge of the myths is necessary to any real culture. Modern writers do not make such ready use of them as did the older schools, but Lowell and Tennyson, Browning and Arnold, and a host of minor writers assume that their readers know as their alphabet the stories of mythology. In his hymn On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Milton has this stanza following one which tells that the shepherds heard the sweet music:
“Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia’s seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier Union.”
How little of intelligent interest attaches to the first three lines if one has no knowledge beyond the literal meaning of the phrases! “The hollow round of Cynthia’s seat” has beauty for that person only who knows something of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and of the huntress-queen of Greek mythology.
Allusions lead one to every department of knowledge and are the result of the early training and experience of the author. No one needs to be told that Milton studied the classics, that Ruskin and Tennyson read the bible devotedly, that Shakespeare passed his early life in the country. The unconscious trend of their thought as shown by their allusions gives that information most distinctly. If a man loves history in his youth his writings will be filled with historical allusions; if he is a devotee of science one will find the phenomena of nature the source of his illustrations. The reader must be ready to understand and interpret feelingly these allusions no matter what the particular bent of the author. To the student the allusion is often very difficult of comprehension, for if it comes in the way of an ingenious paraphrase he may pass over it without the slightest recognition. When it is direct, a dictionary or other reference book will frequently make it sufficiently clear.
Basis of Figures. The allusion is but one of many ways in which an author varies the literal meaning of his sentences and gives more force and beauty to his statements. There are a large number of different figures of speech, but such fine distinctions as the rhetoricians make are unnecessary for the ordinary student of literature. It is the meaning the figures convey that concerns us, for an adept in reading always notices the skilful use of figures, and his pleasure is heightened by their delicacy and beauty.