Each
phrase, besides, is to be comely in itself; and between the
implication and the evolution of the sentence there should be
a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often
disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously
prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the
balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be
infinitely various; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise,
and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were,
the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious
neatness.
The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in
beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an
instant overlooked or sacrificed. So with the writer. His
pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is yet
addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands of
logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies
of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer,
or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on
the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot
must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be
precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the
argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. The
genius of prose rejects the CHEVILLE no less emphatically
than the laws of verse; and the CHEVILLE, I should perhaps
explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very
watered phrase employed to strike a balance in the sound.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25