Even the derangement of
the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous
for the mind; and it is by the means of such designed
reversal that the elements of a judgment may be most
pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action
most perspicuously bound into one.
The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and
logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style,
that is the foundation of the art of literature. Books
indeed continue to be read, for the interest of the fact or
fable, in which this quality is poorly represented, but still
it will be there. And, on the other hand, how many do we
continue to peruse and reperuse with pleasure whose only
merit is the elegance of texture? I am tempted to mention
Cicero; and since Mr. Anthony Trollope is dead, I will. It
is a poor diet for the mind, a very colourless and toothless
'criticism of life'; but we enjoy the pleasure of a most
intricate and dexterous pattern, every stitch a model at once
of elegance and of good sense; and the two oranges, even if
one of them be rotten, kept dancing with inimitable grace.
Up to this moment I have had my eye mainly upon prose; for
though in verse also the implication of the logical texture
is a crowning beauty, yet in verse it may be dispensed with.
You would think that here was a death-blow to all I have been
saying; and far from that, it is but a new illustration of
the principle involved. For if the versifier is not bound to
weave a pattern of his own, it is because another pattern has
been formally imposed upon him by the laws of verse.
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