Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/194

THE QUESTION OF CLEARNESS learned the paramount importance of clearness.

Clearness is so inseparable an element of all good writing that many a critic and rhetorician has regarded it as a term almost synonymous with that illusive quality called style. Professor A. S. Hill, for instance, who for so many years occupied the chair of English at Harvard University, chose to divide style under three heads : to the intellectual quality of style he gave the name, "Clearness;" to the emotional, "Force;" and to the aesthetic, "Elegance." And many another teacher of rhetoric has similarly invented his own special classification and definition. But according to the ordinary and common sense understanding of the terms, clearness is not so much an element of style as it is a condition precedent to it, just as health is not beauty, but a condition precedent to beauty. Clearness may be that crystal transparency of