Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/199

Rh conclude that if the verb is compound, the subject must be long as well as emphatic, or the inversion will not do.

These are both formed on the right principle, but the second suffers from the awkwardness of the auxiliary.

Still more when considered in the concrete than when considered in the abstract do the views of Hobbes and his disciples prove to be inconsistent.—.

Here we have neither the data that justify balance inversion, nor the results that should follow from it. It is due to the false principle of 'emphasis' dealt with below in d. and reads as awkwardly as such inversions usually read. The sentence is, no doubt, cumbrous in the uninverted form; but it wants reconstruction, not inversion.

Much deeper down than the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connections.—.

Wrong again, for the same reasons, but not with the same excuse; for the original form is unobjectionable. The emphasis is not on the problem (to find...), but on the clue to it (much deeper down), which, being emphatic, can maintain its position at the end of the sentence. The compound verb is only a secondary objection: we do not mend matters much by substituting lie for must we go to find.

So is every one is a correct inversion: so is too weak to stand at the end, and at the beginning it is a good enough sign-post to tell us that selfishness is going to be defended. But so is every one selfish is wrong: for if selfish is repeated at all, it is repeated with rhetorical effect, and is strong enough to take care of itself. Our second rule is thus violated; and so is our fourth—the subject does not come at the end.