Excerpt from Matter, Form and Style: A Manual of Practice in the Writing of English Composition But I may be allowed to emphasize here the principle which has guided me - namely, that in all forms of composition it is with the mass that one should begin at first, gradually paying more attention to the details of form and style. I have felt that many methods of teaching were doomed to failure because they took the component parts of a subject first, each part separately, so that the pupil could not see the wood for the trees. Whereas it would appear more human and humane to get first the creative act, and then shape the thing created. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.