PRESENTATION OF MATERIAL THE

FORENSIC

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC

WHEN the brief is completed the problem of general structure is solved. The solution is not necessarily unalterable. If the student in the heat of writing strikes a truer relationship of parts than he discovered in making the brief, he should not spare himself the trouble of readjusting the parts of the brief, even though his instructor has pronounced the brief acceptable. Revision resulting from such afterthoughts will not infrequently be necessary until the student has gained real proficiency in brief drawing. The student should not, however, begin to write with the expectation of making changes in structure. He should have worked over his brief till he feels that he has reached a unified, coherent, and emphatic arrangement of material.

He is then able to concentrate his attention upon the problem of presenting what he has to say with as much force and charm of style as he can command. There is no peculiar law for argumentation of the highest order, that is, argumentation addressed to an audience whose intelligence is assumed to be

equal to the writer's, no pattern to which all must conform. There is as much room for individuality here as in any field of literature. Given the same brief, we may have as many different developments of it as there are individuals to experiment with it, if only each writes naturally. But very often, at first, the writer feels all his pleasure and power in composition slipping away as he sits down to expand his unyielding brief into a forensic. A statement of propositions and supporting evidence almost repellent in its formality and rigidness is apt to be the result when the student writes for the first time under the dominance of a brief. If he is not pleased with his accomplishment, he should not blame the brief. He should rather bear in mind Phillips Brooks's advice to young preachers. "The true way to get rid of the boniness of a sermon," he told them, "is not by leaving out the skeleton, but by clothing it with flesh."

One who conceives of argumentation as an arid form of discourse in which natural ability to write is at a discount, will scarcely succeed here. It is true that in argumentation a pleasing style without a solid, logical foundation can not make a successful piece of work. It is also true that a good brief developed with fidelity so that the finished forensic shall have the apprentice virtues, — thoroughness, unity, coherence, etc., even though it has no touch of the true amateur's pleasure in writing, in finding the fit

expression for his idea, may make an acceptable forensic. But if the brief is a good one, its right development will tax all the skill the writer has. The briefs being equally good, the best forensic will be his who has the most distinguished ability as a writer. All other forms of discourse - narration, description, and exposition-are used in the development of an argument. That it must here serve a purpose ought to give point to the story, lucidity to the explanation, vividness to the description.

You may feel when your brief is finished that all has been said, and that may be the case In the paragraph on society analyzed on page 166 there is comparatively little development. But this is not always the case. Your brief may say:

My experience leads me to think treats give the moderately poor more pleasure than the rich, for

When I was poor I took greater joy in the purchase

of a luxury.

When I was poor I took greater joy in the theatre. See how Charles Lamb makes "Bridget " in her argument on this question develop these propositions:

"Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare- and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it

was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late- and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome and when you presented it to me and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating, you called it) — and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak-was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit-your old corbeau for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen or sixteen shillings was it? a great affair we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.

-

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood when we squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me and the pleasure was the better for a little shame and when the curtain drew up, what cared we

for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially

With such re

that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going-that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage - because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. flections we consoled our pride then, and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, but there was still a law of civility to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play, afterwards!'"

- CHARLES LAMB: Old China.

The first proposition is made convincing to the reader by the detailed narration of a signal instance

the purchase of the folio; the second, by an explanation of the compensations that attend a gallery seat in the theatre.

You will notice in the selection from Emerson, already referred to, the tendency to repeat an idea several times:

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes —