Commentary

“ Defining the commentary, verbatim commentary [kaandigai] , creating points on commentary and omitting points on commentary are also composed of in addition. (101) The nature of the verse [suuththiram] is to be a composition of few words pregnant with lofty ideas containing many meanings being instructive in many ways. (102) Verbatim commentary runs with meaning for each and every word in the verse in simple and clear way. (103) The expansion commentary explains the verse clearly and elaborately with illustrations and examples. ”

“ In other words, it’s not that they’re just sort of reproducing it out of hand, but they’re actually talking about it, they’re discussing it, it’s part of the commentary and criticism of the piece itself. ”

“ The long commentary is one which gives all materials indispensible to understand the meaning. (105) The long commentary, according to scholars, will contain asking and answering questions, clearing doubts by means of his author’s work and authoritative other’s work, establishing an ideal boldly. (106) If the work is not in accordance with the above-said rules it is to be considered as defective. (107) Scholars say the primary work is free from defective but the commentary. (108) If defects appear in original or commentary it is considered as flaw. ”

“ Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little experience, the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary. A great deal of experience with little reflection and scant knowledge, gives us books like those of the editio Bipontina13 where there are no notes and much that is unintelligible. ”

“ These and other annotations which are referred to the particular words and clauses they are designed to explain are most easy to be consulted upon occasion; but the exposition which (like this) is put into a continued discourse, digested under proper heads, is much more easy and ready to be read through for one's own or others' instruction. ”

“ Better take with you into the pulpit the merest outline of the discourse, and then trust to the inspiration of the subject, or to the feeling of the hour, when you have the audience before you, and can look into their eyes, than to have a discourse partly written, with blanks to be filled up as you go along; for then you are always beginning afresh, and by the time you have got easy in your spontaneous effort, you are obliged to go back to what you have written, and of course can never get warmed up with your subject, nor try any new adaptations, whatever may be the character of your hearers. ”

“ All literature, then, may be separated into five classes,—narration, description, exposition, argument, and persuasion.
Narration tells what things do; description tells how things look. Narration deals with occurrences; description deals with appearances. Exposition defines a term, or explains a proposition; argument proves the truth or falsity of a proposition; persuasion urges to action upon a proposition. Exposition explains; argument 4 convinces; persuasion arouses. These are the broad lines of distinction which separate the five forms of discourse. ”

“ Do they consider how mixed a thing is every audience, whose taste and judgment differ, perhaps, every day, not only from each other, but themselves? And how to calculate a discourse, that shall exactly suit them all, is beyond the force and reach of human reason, knowledge, or invention. ”

“ Opinions, above all, we judge by the personalities of those who deliver them: by voice, tone, expression, and known character. The Press eliminates three-quarters of all by which opinion may be judged. ”

“ If he intended only to explain, the piece is exposition; if to convince, it is argument; if to arouse to action, it belongs to the literature of persuasion.
It must now be plain that few pieces of literature are purely one form of discourse. The forms are mingled in most of our literature. Hardly a story can be found that does not contain some descriptions; and a description of any considerable length is sure to contain some narrative portions. So, too, narration and description are often found in exposition, argument, and persuasion ”

“ In fact, this is a frequent practise in public speech, where the minds of the hearers often ask for reiteration and expanded statement to help them grasp a subject in its several aspects. This is the very heart of exposition—to amplify and clarify all the terms by which a matter is defined.
Example is another method of amplifying a definition or of expounding an idea more fully. The following sentences immediately succeed Mr. Bates's definition and contrast just quoted:
A good deal which we are accustomed inexactly to call description is really exposition. ”

“ The second point, of criticism and refutation, is one of public communication. As arguments or facts come under scrutiny, debate between scholars is committed to record and new understandings emerge from communication. ”

“ The same is the case with the ideas which the composer of a discourse selects out of the multitudes, which the continual suggestions of the interesting Idea by which he is actuated, that of his end, bring before him. ”

“ A critic of a different age or nation, who should peruse this discourse, must have all these circumstances in his eye, and must place himself in the same situation as the audience, in order to form a true judgment of the oration. ”

“ In exposition and argument, and sometimes in the other forms of discourse, the topic-sentence may be at the end of the paragraph. This is for emphasis in narration and description. In exposition and argument it is better to lead up to an unwelcome truth than to announce it at once. ”

“ In the first place, dialogue, so excellent a means of exhibiting character and opinion, is on the whole not the most appropriate or effective mode of exhibiting action—unless, that is, the whole importance of the action depends on how it is received by one of the parties to the dialogue. ”

“ After a little time our conversation often lapsed into narrative. As the thread of our discourse twisted through the various textures of our different minds, a subject would at times strike on the strong point or favourite idea of some one of our party, and with a half passive, half interested attention, we would hear him to the end. ”

“ When you see him on the platform of some great public meeting, pouring forth argument, appeal, sarcasm, anecdote, fun, and pathos in a never-ceasing flood of vivid English, you feel that you are under the spell of a born orator. ”

“ The commentarii are the general heads — plain unadorned statements of facts or reasoning — which the orator or historian is to employ his genius in setting forth and decorating, so that it may be heard or read with pleasure and admiration by a general audience. ”

“ In this view a debate seems a much more earnest and real thing than as we read it in a newspaper. Think of the debaters meeting each other's eyes, their faces flushing, their looks interpreting their words, their speech growing into eloquence, without losing the genuineness of talk! ”

“ There are so many ways of either guiding or forming opinion by editorial comment or exposition and by the publication of signed or unsigned articles of a more or less rhetorical nature that a complete analysis of the subject means little less than the history of the press. ”

“ All men talk, few converse; of gossip we have enough, of argument more than enough, rhetoric, debate—omit these, speak from the heart to the heart underlying all differences, and we have conversation. For disputing there is the crowd; for ruminating, the woods; the clubs for wit and the superficial fellowship. ”

“ In circles highly civilised the great things, the real things, the hard, the cruel and even the tender things, the true elements of any tension and true facts of any crisis, have ever, for the outsider’s, for the critic’s use, to be translated into terms—terms in the distinguished name of which, terms for the right employment of which, more than one situation of the type I glance at had struck me as all irresistibly appealing. ”

“ All the counsels of the work have a directly reverse tendency. It furnishes a store of the clearest argument and of the most amiable and captivating exhortations, "to raise the genius, and to mend the heart." ”

“ Or in the case of information, which has not this partisan character, he is in a position to assure treatment of his subject by embodying his thesis in the form of a speech delivered by some individual of standing and reputation. ”

“ Seeking a negative result from them,—personal altercation and wrangling,—one gets no fruit; seeking a positive result,—the elucidation and establishment of one’s ideas,—one may get much. Even bad criticisms may thus be made suggestive and fruitful. I declared, in a former lecture on this subject, my conviction that criticism is not the strong point of our national literature. ”

“ Argument.+—Especially in argument is it evident that language presupposes an audience. The fact that we argue implies that some one does not agree with us. The purpose of our argument is to convince some one else of the truth of a proposition which we ourselves believe, and he who wishes to succeed in this must give careful attention to his audience. The question which must always be in the mind of the writer is, What facts shall I select and in what order shall I present them in order to convince my reader? ”

“ One can but answer such questions in the most fragmentary and tentative way, relying for the most part on the opinions and information of those who know, those who are in the van of action, at home and abroad, but also on one's own personal impressions of an incomparable scene. ”

“ But when the beauty arises from some adaptation of the sentiment to customs worn out of use, to opinions not universally prevalent, or to any accidental or minute particularity, which cannot be supplied by common understanding, or common observation, it is the duty of a commentator to lend his assistance. ”

“ We naturally shrink from exposing to the cold criticism of the public, those hidden influences and inward experiences that contribute most powerfully to the formation of character, the benefit of which may be imparted under the combined imagery of fact and fancy. ”

“ We experience often enough the instantaneous occurrence of a multitude of ideas, which we afterwards develop in our discourse. We see this in those quick and lively replies excited by a word, or a gesture, which contradicts our opinions or wounds our feelings. ”

“ For when the example is the ground, being set down in a history at large, it is set down with all circumstances, which may sometimes control the discourse thereupon made, and sometimes supply it, as a very pattern for action; whereas the examples alleged for the discourse’s sake are cited succinctly, and without particularity, and carry a servile aspect towards the discourse which they are brought in to make good. ”

“ In the long run, however, nothing makes an argument appeal more to readers than an air of fairness and sincerity. If it is evident in an argument of fact that you are seeking to establish the truth, or in an argument of policy that your single aim is the greatest good of all concerned, your audience will listen to you with favorable ears. If on the other hand you seem to be chiefly concerned with the vanity of a personal victory, or to be thinking of selfish advantages, they will listen to you coolly and with jealous scrutiny of your points. ”

“ Finally, in the formation of an opinion as to the abstract preferableness of one course of action over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or right significance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of one’s contemporaries lean in the other direction is naught, and no more than dust in the balance. ”

“ Whereas if you speak to them of a Poem, a Play, or a Moral Discourse upon a Subject capable of Rhetorical Ornaments, they will immediately pass their Censure, right or wrong; and Twenty Men, perhaps, shall give Twenty different Opinions; whilst, in the other Cases, scarce Two of the Twenty shall disagree, if they are conscious to themselves that they have Skill enough to judge without another's help. ”

“ Discussion brings out complaints and grievances, unsparing criticism of existing things, and fresh thoughts, new ideas, plans of improvement, and induces the popular mind to consider them. Thus it is a progressive force. ”

“ Through speech after speech, strings of hollow abstractions are endlessly renewed as in a meeting of students in rhetoric for the purpose of practice, or in a society of old bookworms for their own amusement. ”

“ If this observation be just, it will apply with greater force to literary history itself, which, being often the mere history of the human mind, has to record opinions as well as events—to discuss as well as to narrate—to show how accepted truths become suspicious—or to confirm what has hitherto rested in obscure uncertainty, and to balance contending opinions and opposite facts with critical nicety. ”

“ In such passions, therefore, which we would represent as true copies of real ones, let us be ourselves like those who unfeignedly suffer, and let our speech proceed from such a disposition of mind as that in which we would have the judge be. ”

“ We have inherited from the last two centuries a great stock of undigested notions which affect our minds whenever social topics come under discussion. These notions keep us from seeing realities. We have a school of publicists whose discussions consist in a reiteration of pet phrases and watchwords, which never contain more than a small fraction of truth. ”

“ It was talk in the press and talk from the soapbox and talk in the circles in which one moved, talk with convincing earnestness, talk with arguments that reached down to the motives on which men really act. ”