mind at liberty to notice every suggested idea in the full mental amplification, without losing sight of the central purpose for which Cassius speaks. At this point the student should practice for several lessons making condensative paraphrases of strong passages. Take, for example, scenes from Shakespeare, and condense long speeches into a line or two. Take orations, essays, descriptions, criticisms, in short, any good material used for ordinary literary or rhetorical analysis, and condense the thought of each paragraph into a single sentence. This condensative paraphrasing for vocal expression is the counterpart of the testing of rhetorical unity in the paragraph. The reduction to a single sentence should, however, not be a mere abstract of the thought as given, but should be the reader's measurement of the aim and purpose in that thought. For this purpose those selections will be the best which reveal something of the personality of the writer, and which contain a real human interest. No text-book will afford so many rich. examples for this work as the Bible. Condense the paragraphs of the Sermon on the Mount, those of Luke xv., of John iii. and iv., of Rom. viii., of 1 Cor. xv., almost any of the Psalms, many passages in the Prophets, many in the narrative portions of the Old Testament. Prosaic Paraphrasing. In this, the purpose is to reduce poetry to prose as nearly equivalent in meaning as possible. It serves to correct the cantish, sing-song style so prevalent in the reading of poetry; and, deeper than this, to regain the impression, which the poetic form, especially in familiar selections, is likely somewhat to dull. The student need not be disturbed by the fact that the paraphrase will often be intrinsically inferior to the poetry. This temporary loss will be far more than balanced by the permanent gain realized by compelling one's mind to analyze the thought, and so to receive a fresher and more vivid impression. The translation, here offered, of Tennyson's Bugle Song is one of a number of possible interpretations. It is helpful to the reader to adopt some definite, self-consistent interpretation that will open to his own mind the depth and beauty of the poem. To assume to offer as an equivalent any paraphrase one might make, would of course be an affront, not only to the author, but, as well, to every appreciative reader; to prepare one's own mind more fully to express Tennyson's words, by thus first bringing them down to the reader's own level, is quite another thing. "The splendor falls on castle-walls And snowy summits old in story: O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, O sweet and far from cliff and scar Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river; Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying." The mellow, brilliant light now glorifies the turrets and arches of yon ancient fortress, and tints the historic peaks of the hoary mountains towering above us. The westering sun sends slanting rays, which shimmer on the water; and the free, glad stream, rejoicing in the fullness of its life, gives itself to its destined course with confident abandon, throwing out its glorious torrents resplendent in the smile of heaven. And while we gaze, hark to that floating strain of melody! Oh, let the bugle tones awake the echoes from hill and valley! Listen! how the sounds grow fainter, fainter, but still musical, and lingeringly sweet! Hark again! how thrillingly resonant, and yet how airy and dreamlike, as it seems to leave us, throwing back its soft "good-bye!" How transporting come those enchanting melodies, refined from all the noises of the earth below, and, like the airy peaks that buoyantly re-echo them, upraising fancy to ideal heights, where spirit dwells, unmixed with baser matter! Let these sprite voices once again remind us of that higher spirit-life whose peaks of pure affection reach, as these hill-tops do, far into heaven. My love, these mellow sounds, and those rich colors in our sky, stay but a moment; we turn our ear to catch the last reverberation, and it sounds no more; we search the purpling sky for those bright tints we saw but now - they gleam no longer. Not like them is our love. It only swells the fuller, as chord awakens answering chord in our responsive souls. There is no tendency in love-tones to grow feeble, nor in love-lighted skies to pale and darken. The song of love is but enhanced with each reverberation, and so its volume and its sweetness shall increase to all eternity. Then let the glad-voiced horn once more sound forth the notes that feebly tell our spirits' quivering, trembling, yet exultant joy; and as its tones, reflected, die away, let our souls repeat, yet once again, that truer spirit-song, whose echoes never cease. [NOTE 3.] - A Conscious Intention and Instinctive Use. passage, or a form of words, long familiar to one, ceases to have for him the freshness of a lately discovered truth; the habit of freely paraphrasing necessitates that freshness and vividness of impression which is indispensable to a genuine delivery. It forms that part of elocutionary training which is most closely connected with what we call the instinct for expression. When we speak of the expressional instinct or the logical instinct, the discriminative instinct or the imaginative instinct, we do not, of course, mean that man speaks blindly or unintentionally. Our human instincts are regulated by reason. To say that a man has done a thing unthinkingly is not to say that he has done it accidentally, or in accordance with no law. The purpose in all training for expression, as in every other department of education, is to subordinate automatic action to genuine purpose or intention. The fact that most of our daily acts are performed automatically simply emphasizes the truth that the human mind is capable of a great mastery over itself and the delicate machinery which it operates. Professor James says: There is no material antagonism between instinct and reason. Though the animal richest in reason is also the animal richest in instinctive impulses too, he never seems the fatal automaton which a merely instinctive animal must be. Psychology, Briefer Course, P. 398. - The end of expressional paraphrasing is, therefore, to bring to consciousness for a time those thought-processes which must be present in vivid, fresh, suggestive vocal interpretation. By making these thought-processes, temporarily, a matter of conscious attention, and even of minute analysis, we become able to regulate, diversify, and enrich the instinct for expression. NOTES ON EXPRESSIONAL PARAPHRASING. NOTE 1. It is acknowledged scholarship to choose words definitely and purposely, even though such painstaking choice should retard, for the time, the spontaneous "flow" which should characterize good writing. Is it any less disciplinary or any less useful to choose the manner of uttering words? Not only is it true that "manner is matter;" it is also true that very often manner is much more important than matter; i.e., it makes much more difference how one speaks than what one speaks. NOTE 2. The following passage from Clay is a notable example of expansion on the ideas contained in "Lord and Savior," and "United States." What the orator here uttered in words might often, perhaps ordinarily, be held in thought, as a mental expansion, a subjective, inward com'ment, giving color and significance to the fewer words: "What appearance, sir, on the page of history, would a record like this make: In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Savior, 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold, unfeeling apathy, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States almost the sole, the last, the greatest repository of human hope and human freedom, the representatives of a nation capable of bringing into the field a million of bayonets- while the free men of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, its fervent prayer, for Grecian success; while the whole continent was rising, by one simultaneous motion, solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking the aid of heaven to spare Greece, and to invigorate her arms; while temples and senate-houses were all resounding with one burst of generous sympathy; in the year of our Lord and Savior- that Savior alike of Christian Greece and of us—a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece to inquire into her state and condition, with expression of our good wishes and our sympathies, — and it was rejected !'” NOTE 3. The musical setting of a deep and beautiful thought affords an instance of expansive paraphrasing which may well illustrate the general principle. In this connection, indeed, it is something more than illustration; it is really a finer and more elaborated application of the same |