Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/242

228 Dr. v. Ruville much more lucidly than by most historians. This portion of his work is the more interesting because of the pains he takes to clear George III from the charge of conspiring against his great Minister.–Times.

The reader's experience has probably been that the constant fresh starts are at first inspiriting, that about half-way he has had quite enough of the novelty, and that he is intensely grateful, when the solitary semicolon comes into sight, for a momentary lapse into ordinary gentle progress. Writers like this may almost be suspected of taking literally a summary piece of advice that we have lately seen in a book on English composition: Never use a semicolon when you can employ a full-stop. Beadnell lays down a law that at first sight seems to amount to the same thing: The notion of parting short independent sentences otherwise than by a full-stop, rests upon no rational foundation, and leads to endless perplexities. But his practice clears him of the imputation: he is saved by the ambiguity of the word independent. There are grammatical dependence, and dependence of thought. Of all those 'little hard round unconnected things', in the Times review, that 'seem to come upon one as shot would descend from a shot-making tower' (Sir Arthur Helps), hardly one is not dependent on its neighbours in the more liberal sense, though each is a complete sentence and independent in grammar. Now one important use of stops is to express the degrees of thought dependence. A style that groups several complete sentences together, by the use of semicolons, because they are more closely connected in thought, is far more restful and easy–for the reader, that is–than the style that leaves him to do the grouping for himself; and yet it is free from the formality of the period, which consists, not of grammatically independent sentences, but of a main sentence with many subordinate clauses. We have not space for a long example of the group system rightly applied; most good modern writers free from the craving to be up to date will supply