Each class, in right of
this distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may claim
a common ground of existence, and it may be said with
sufficient justice that the motive and end of any art
whatever is to make a pattern; a pattern, it may be, of
colours, of sounds, of changing attitudes, geometrical
figures, or imitative lines; but still a pattern. That is
the plane on which these sisters meet; it is by this that
they are arts; and if it be well they should at times forget
their childish origin, addressing their intelligence to
virile tasks, and performing unconsciously that necessary
function of their life, to make a pattern, it is still
imperative that the pattern shall be made.
Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their
pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and
pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the
business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but
that is not what we call literature; and the true business of
the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning,
involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by
successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and
then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear
itself. In every properly constructed sentence there should
be observed this knot or hitch; so that (however delicately)
we are led to foresee, to expect, and then to welcome the
successive phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an
element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common figure
of the antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an
antithesis is first suggested and then deftly evaded.
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