Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed
The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar
Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth
All the most valiant chiefs.

And he saw that youth,

-Ibid.

Of age and looks to be his own dear son,
Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand,
Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe
Of an unskillful gardener has been cut,
Mowing the garden grassplots near its bed,
And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom,
On the mown, dying grass—so Sohrab lay,
Lovely in death, upon the common sand.

-Ibid.

Easy to understand as is the principle of Group Sequence, it has taught us a most important lesson: and that is that groups combine in large and larger groups and series until thought or picture is complete. The inattentive student reads more or less choppily, as was pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, and if the sentence is of considerable length he forgets the beginning of it before he gets to the end; and when he reads aloud, this choppiness manifests itself in falling inflections at the end of almost every group. And the worst of it is not merely that the vocal expression is faulty and the listener confused, but that the poor reading is a sure sign of the reader's failure to grasp the meaning.

At this point, however, the student must be warned that while the thought is often incomplete at a comma, a semicolon, or even at a colon, it does not follow that

it may not be complete at such points. Each case must be decided for itself and, fortunately, the decision is not hard to make. We found that punctuation does not necessarily determine grouping, and here, again, we learn that it does not necessarily determine continuity, or Group Sequence. Let me illustrate. A parent gives his child a lot of presents on Christmas Day, and speaking of them says: "I gave my child picture books, candies, a hobby horse, a drum, and a gun"; while the child, with great interest in each one of the separate gifts, thinks of them one at a time. Now what will be the difference (apart from the feeling) in the way the father and the child enumerate the gifts? Does not the father regard all gifts as one gift and does not the child regard each gift by itself? Read the list of presents as the father would, and then as the child (the child beginning his enumeration with "I got"), and note the difference. And yet, so far as the punctuation is concerned, the speeches would be printed exactly alike.

This same principle is beautifully exemplified in a little poem. Two young women have returned from

a holiday in the country, and they are asked what they have seen.

The one with yawning made reply:

"What have we seen?-Not much have I!

Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams,

Blue sky and clouds, and sunny gleams."

The other, smiling, said the same;

But with face transfigured and eye of flame:
"Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams!

Blue sky and clouds, and sunny gleams."

The first girl saw several things, no one of which held her attention, so that in her reply she threw them all together; while to the other girl each aspect of the picture was so important that for the moment it held her attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was as if she were saying "I saw grand old trees. I saw beautiful meadows. I saw majestic mountains," etc. So again you see that the commas are used for grammatical purposes only. When you get the meaning (again, just as in Grouping) you pay no further attention to the punctuation.

EXERCISES

He had completely lost his voice the following winter, and had ever since been little better than a cracked fiddle, which is good for nothing but firewood.-ELIOT: Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story.

Then, just after their third child was born, fever came, swept away the sickly mother and the two eldest children, and attacked Sarti himself, who rose from his sick-bed with enfeebled brain and muscle, and a tiny baby on his hands, scarcely four months old.-Ibid.

Even Mrs. Sharp had been so smitten with pity by the scene she had witnessed, as to shed a small tear, though she was not at all subject to that weakness; indeed, she abstained from it on principle, because, as she often said, it was known to be the worst thing in the world for the eyes.-Ibid.

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came

in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. "Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!

There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set." And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English

men.

Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the

devil,

For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet." -TENNYSON: The Revenge.

Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so

The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below.

-Ibid.

And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and mus

queteers,

And a dozen times we shook 'em off as

shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.

a dog that

-Ibid.

The next illustration is from The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock gives his reasons for hating Antonio:

Salarino. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what's that good for?

Shylock. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.

and hindered me half a million;

He hath disgraced me,

laughed at my losses,

mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew.

Now, if you were running over these reasons rapidly, you would say that Shylock hated Antonio because Antonio had laughed at his losses, mocked at his gains, scorned his nation, thwarted his bargains, cooled his friends, heated his enemies-merely enumerating the causes. But to Shylock each offense in itself was enough to justify revenge. It makes no difference how rapidly his passion would hurry him along; each point in his charge against Antonio is complete in itself. Perhaps Shylock's mental attitude will be made clearer by printing his speech thus:

I hate

I hate him because he laughed at my losses. him because he mocked at my gains. I hate him because he scorned my nation. I hate him because he thwarted my bargains. I hate him because he cooled my friends. I hate him because he heated mine enemies. It is possible to conceive of this sentence being made up of a series of contrasts equivalent to

He laughed at my losses and mocked at my gains; scorned my nation and thwarted my bargains; cooled my friends and heated mine enemies;

but I don't think that this is as good an interpretation as the former. In any case there is closure at "gains" and at "bargains"; and if you see that, you have learned the lesson I wanted to teach you.

I take a final example from Shakespeare's Henry V. The King is urging his soldiers on to a final assault