Thus:--"Though probably true, a modern newspaper-statement
quoted in a book as testimony, would be laughed at; but the letter
of a court gossip, if written some centuries ago, is thought good
historical evidence."
25. By making this change, some of the suspensions are avoided
and others shortened; while there is less liability to produce
premature conceptions. The passage quoted below from 'Paradise Lost'
affords a fine instance of a sentence well arranged; alike in the
priority of the subordinate members, in the avoidance of long and
numerous suspensions, and in the correspondence between the order
of the clauses and the sequence of the phenomena described, which,
by the way, is a further prerequisite to easy comprehension, and
therefore to effect.
"As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eye,
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold;
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barr'd, and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles;
So clomb this first grand thief into God's fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
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