In practice, I should add, the ear is not always so exacting;
and ordinary writers, in ordinary moments, content themselves
with avoiding what is harsh, and here and there, upon a rare
occasion, buttressing a phrase, or linking two together, with
a patch of assonance or a momentary jingle of alliteration.
To understand how constant is this preoccupation of good
writers, even where its results are least obtrusive, it is
only necessary to turn to the bad. There, indeed, you will
find cacophony supreme, the rattle of incongruous consonants
only relieved by the jaw-breaking hiatus, and whole phrases
not to be articulated by the powers of man.
CONCLUSION. - We may now briefly enumerate the elements of
style. We have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of
keeping his phrases large, rhythmical, and pleasing to the
ear, without ever allowing them to fall into the strictly
metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of combining
and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern,
feet and groups, logic and metre - harmonious in diversity:
common to both, the task of artfully combining the prime
elements of language into phrases that shall be musical in
the mouth; the task of weaving their argument into a texture
of committed phrases and of rounded periods - but this
particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common
to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and
communicative words. We begin to see now what an intricate
affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of
taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make
it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete
a pleasure.
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