Note VI. A rigorous application of the principle of modification as elucidated above, enables us to go still farther, and to assert that the verb, with all its appendages, does in fact modify the subject, which thus appears to be the nucleus of the sentence.

Note VII.—If itself unmodified, the modifier is said to be simple: (1) 'He loves wisdom.' (2) 'He is a lover of wisdom.' (3) 'We hear that he is wise.' If modified, it is complex: (1) 'He built houses of stone.' (2) 'He ran with wonderful rapidity.' (3) 'He said that the planets revolve, a well-known fact. If consisting of two or more coördinate parts, it is compound: (1) Large and beautiful rivers.' (2) 'Men of wisdom and of power.' (3) 'They have decided that you should come, and that he should go.' Either constituent, it is evident, may be modified, and thus become complex.

Note VIII. A modifier, however extended, is said to be of the word-form, if its base (the fundamental portion) is a single term; of the phrase-form, if its base is a phrase; of the clause-form, if its base is a clause. Not infrequently, a primary base, with reference to a given modifier, becomes, in union with such modifier, a complex base, with reference to a second modifier. Thus in ‘fragrant red roses, the primary base is 'roses'; the secondary, 'red roses'; for 'fragrant' modifies, not 'roses,' but the complex idea in 'red roses.'

EXERCISES.

1. Distinguish between: 'He painted the blue box,' and 'He painted the box blue.'

2. In the preceding, give the entire modifier of 'distinguish.' Is this of the word, phrase, or clause-form? What is it as to office? The incorporated sentences are the equivalents of what parts of speech?

3. Give the distinguishable shades of meaning in: 'Dido is queen,' 'Dido, a queen, walks,'Dido walks a queen,' Dido walks queenlike,' 'Dido walks majestically.'

4. Investigate: 'myself,' 'ourselves,' 'herself,' 'themselves,' 'himself,' 'itself.'

5. Explain the construction in: Myself is weak.'

6. Write a sentence containing, with reference to some modifier, a complex base.

7. Write a sentence containing a complex modifier of the phraseform. Write one with a complex modifier of the clause-form.

8. Determine the subordinate parts; whether they are adjective, objective, or adverbial elements; whether they are normally or abnormally (by equivalence) such; whether they are of the word, phrase, or clause-form; whether simple, complex, or compound:

(1) We live in better times. (2) My connections, once the source of happiness, now imbitter the reverse of my fortune. (3) He has a mind to discourse on that theme. (4) A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, seldom fails of entertainment to itself. (5) Toward night the school-master walked over to the cottage where his little friend lay sick. (6) Who can tell when he sets forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the uncertain current of existence, or when he may return? (7) What means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us into submission? (8) Pope was not content to satisfy, he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavored to do his best. (9) He made them give up their spoils.

(10) Money and man a mutual falsehood show.

(11) Some pious drops the closing eye requires.

(14)

With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round,
And Nature in the tangles soft involved

Of death-like sleep.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SENTENCE

INDEPENDENT ELEMENTS.

Every opinion is strong enough to have had its martyrs.-Montaigne.

IN

N the use of speech for the purpose of communicating ideas and feelings, we frequently employ expressions which are not reducible to any grammatical connection with the main parts of discourse. They have an ideal or emotive value in the sentence, but they do not enter syntactically into its structure. The type of the class is perhaps the interjection, rising from an almost inarticulate sound to a noun, verb, or phrase:

Did we your race on mortal man bestow,
Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?

For ah! what is there of inferior birth,

That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth;

What wretched creature of what wretched kind,

Than man more weak, calamitous, and blind ?-Homer.

For rhetorical effect, words of ordinary language are employed interjectionally:

Alas! why comest thou at this dreadful moment,
To shock the peace of my departing soul?

Away! I prithee leave me! -Rowe.

But all too little, welaway! lasteth such joy.- Chaucer.
For, by All-Hallows, yet methinketh

That All-Hallows' breath stinketh.-Heywood.

What! is great Mephistopheles so passionate

For being deprived of the joys of heaven?-Marlowe.

More or less closely connected with these typical forms are substantives, occurring in addresses or exclamations:

O God! O God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world.-Shakespeare.
Come, you spirits,

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.—Ibid.
Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer?

Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer,

That bloody man?-Marlowe.

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung.-Byron.

Of like character, in their freedom from formal government, are phrases consisting of participles (expressed or implied) in agreement with a substantive different from the nominative of the verb:

I shall not lag behind, nor err
The way, thou leading.-Milton.

On these and kindred thoughts intent, I lay
In silence, musing by my comrade's side,

He also silent.- Wordsworth.

Me howling blasts drive divious, tempest-toss'd,

Sails ripp'd, seams opening wide, and compass lost.—Cowper. Sometimes the substantive is omitted, and then the participle is used impersonally-a construction, however, of questionable propriety: Granting that you are right, what is the inference?' Talking of books, here is a rare

one.' Some participles, in this way, gradually acquire the force of prepositions: Considering the circumstances, I do not think him to blame.' 'Notwithstanding our losses, we shall persevere.'

Finally, words used in a preparatory way, or exple

tively, clauses without limitation or condition, and, in general, terms distantly connected perhaps with the utterance, yet not absolutely necessary to the sense, and ungoverned, are grammatically independent:

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?-Shakespeare.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.-Byron.
Somewhere in India upon a time

(Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse)
There dwelt two saints whose privilege sublime
It was to sit and watch the world grow worse.
Each from his hut rushed six score times a day,
Like a great Canon of the Church full-rammed
With cartridge theologic (so to say),

Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, slammed
His hovel's door behind him in a way

That to his foe said plainly,- you'll be damned.—Lowell.

Bardolph, am I not fallen away? . . . . do I not bate? do I not dwindle? . . . . Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; . Well, I'll repent, and that suddenly, while

I am in some liking.—Shakespeare.

Note I. The student must not fall into the error of judging that interruptive or parenthetical parts are always independent. The proper criterion or test is, not the accident of position or punctuation, but the connection of thought. Thus, the following parenthesis is both grammatically and logically related to the leading verb:

I do beseech you

(Chiefly that I may set it in my prayers),
What is your name?-Shakespeare.

Often the only office of the curves is emphasis. They serve merely to draw particular attention to the matter within them. Again, 'cried' and 'said,' in the following passages, are equally governing verbs:

'Make me a cottage in the vale,' she cried,

'Where I may mourn and pray.'-George Eliot.