growing toward the close; (2) in the places of the cæsuras; (3) in the closing cadences. The juxtaposition of stressed syllables has a grave and weighty effect, like that of the Greek spondee; and this effect is increased by the asyndeton. Every member but one begins with an unstressed syllable. Therefore this one ("Great examples") throws emphasis upon its first word by the break in the movement.

More freely varied, and at the same time more finely harmonized, is the famous opening of the fifth chapter:

1. Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah,

2. and in a yard underground and thin walls of clay outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above it, uuul

~ (11)

3. and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests,

~ (7)

4. what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relics,

311

5. or might not gladly say,

(3)

(7)

Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim?

6. Time, which antiquates antiquities,

7. and hath an art to make dust of all things,

SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Urn Burial, Chapter v.

3. OTHER RECURRENCES

235. But it will not have escaped an attentive ear that the noble harmony of this passage has something more than rhythm. Besides the grave measure that attunes us to the contemplation of death, we are aware of other recurrences and correspondences of sound. In the first four members it is not hard to discover that N (M) — L(R)-D (T, Th) run through in various combinations, that the labials (B, P) come in rarely, and that the sibilants are uncommonly few. Thus the fine sonority of the whole cannot be thought haphazard. It is as if harmonized upon the word diuturnity. Stevenson goes so far as to say: "Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, demands, and harmonizes with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature."

The pattern, to use Stevenson's word, of De Quincey's "impassioned prose" often shows equally striking

recurrences:

I. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns;

5. And I knew by childish memories that she could go

abroad upon the winds,

(6)

6. when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the thundering of organs,

uul

~ (5)

7. and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds.

(4)

- DE QUINCEY, Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow.

Dropping the least frequent consonants, we may exhibit the remainder thus:

I. HR Z R SWT ND STL WLD ND SLP TRNZ

4. WRZ DDM RND HR HD

5. ND N CHLD MMRZ D BRD WNDZ

6. HRD SBNG LTNS ND NDRNG RGNZ

If the similar S and Z, N and NG, be counted together, the series of combinations is quite remarkable SR STNDSTL LDNDSL TRNS, etc., liquid, dental, nasal, sibilant, as in litanies.

But the dominance of the long i (ai) in the first four measures should make us aware also of recurrences among the accented vowels:

1. ai ī ŭ ai ī ŭ

2. (ai) ai ou

3. Q(ai) ǎ ĕ

4. ẹ ai(ě) ou ĕ

5. (ai) u ai ě ō ọĬ

6. ŭ ŏ ĭ ŭ o̟

7. ě ŭ ŭ ou

236. These harmonies, evidently beautiful, are yet somewhat too marked in rhythm and alliteration for

a long-sustained passage of prose. Like Swinburne, De Quincey runs too near the artificial. In general, the finer harmony of prose is typically freer, less obvious, more implicit; in particular, the recurrences should be felt rather than remarked. In sound, as in sense, that effect of which we are separately conscious is less than perfect. The ideal is that no feature of style should call attention to itself, that each should be felt only as chiming with the effect of the whole.

But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood; and at first it was fair as the morning and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece. But when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age. It bowed the head and broke its stalk; and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces.

- JEREMY TAYLOR: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, Chapter i., § 2.

f. Sincerity

237. Elegance, strength, harmony, are thus seen to demand the cultivation of every student of style. But as the primary and ultimate meaning of style is the artistic expression of personality, so the proportion of these qualities in any style is quite beyond rules, is the choice of the particular artist. Rather we should not speak of proportion at all, as if style might be produced by judicious mixture, but only of the different points of view which we may assume for revision. And never can any one safely permit himself to forget that his object is not to make style, as if style were something

separate from himself and his message, but only to attain style by better and better truth to what moves. him to speak. Style conceived as something separable, as ornament applicable after the thing is done, is a delusion as immoral as it is inartistic. All ornament, in any art, that does not spring as if organically from the conception of the whole is an offence to good taste; but in literature it is worse than anywhere else. For words. are so far the necessary expression of all men, they involve so much of life, that what in other arts is bad taste, in literature is bad morals. To study style as a mechanism of extraneous ornament would be both futile and insincere. Few men, we must presume, can ever be so misguided; but there is some danger for almost every one of lapsing in that direction. Every time a writer determines a phrase purely by its elegance, strength, or harmony, apart from its faithfulness to his message, he is guilty of malfeasance; and a habit of phrase-seeking, in this sense of those words, is usually punished, not only by loss of self-respect, but also by loss of artistic power. Naïveté is a different matter, the gift of directness which we call unconscious art. Some men never lose the child's unconsciousness of how his expression appears to a conventional world, never lose it or can recall it at will. So they "pretend" singly and fully- and that is sincere art. But sincere art is not confined to this happy birthright. Indeed, for most men, even for most artists, it is an attainment of conscious striving. The popular idea that for sincerity of expression the only need is something to say and a plentiful lack of training in how to say it, is a fallacy refuted over and over again by authors who, with the abundance of matter both new and personal, for lack of