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But no English reader with a cultivated ear would be likely to ask whether the following bore any resemblance to Horace; simply because, through lack of rhythm, it is shapeless, and it leaves on the mind no impression of having any likeness or similitude of its own:

Methinks Dame Nature to discriminate

What's just from what's unjust entirely fails;
Though doubtless fairly she can separate

What's good from what is bad, and aye prevails
What to avoid, what to desire, to state;

And Reason cannot prove that in the scales
The man who broke another's cabbage-leaf

Should weigh as guilty as the sacrilegious thief.

654. It would lead us too far if we attempted to exemplify in detail the conclusion at which these latter pages are pointed. It is this:-Our language has passed on beyond the stage at which the chime of words is a care to the national ear, and it has adopted instead thereof the pleasure of a musical rhythm, which pervades the sentence and binds it into one. Ewald has happily described the perception of rhythm as Sinn fürs Ganze-a feeling or sentiment for the Whole. When the English language is now used so as to display a sonorous aptness in the words, we call it Word-painting.

Modern languages have a continuity of development and a flexibility of action, and growing out of these a power of following the movements of the mind, such as was never attained by the classical languages. If we take Demosthenes and Cicero as the maturest products of the Greek and Latin languages, we feel that they do not attain to the range of the best modern writers, or even to that of the fine passages in the prose writings of Milton. Great elasticity, great plasticity, has been added to language by the development of symbolism; great acquisitions have been made both in the compass and in the rhythm of language. This of course displays itself chiefly in the higher oratorical efforts.

The capacity of a language is seen best in the masterly periods of great orators. In our day we have heard much praise of short sentences; and that praise for the most part has been well bestowed. The vast majority of writers are engaged in the diffusion of knowledge, in popularising history or science; or else they write with the avowed purpose of entertaining. Wherever the object is to make knowledge easy, or to make reading easy, the short sentence is to be commended. But when the mind of an original thinker burns with the conception of new thoughts, or the mind of the orator is aflame with the enthusiasm of new combinations and newly perceived conclusions, it is natural for them to overflow in long and elaborately subordinated sentences, which tax the powers of the hearer or reader to keep up with them. These are among the greatest efforts of mind, and their best expression naturally constitutes the grandest exhibition of the power of human speech; and this power has received great accessions by the modern development of Symbolism and its companion Rhythm.

655. Short sentences are prevalent in our language, as long ones are in the German. In all things we incline to curtness and stuntness. Not that this gives the full account of the matter. German literature has been far more engaged in the acquisition, while English literature has been employed more in the diffusion, of knowledge. This is probably the chief cause of our short and easy sentences. But we can use the cumulate construction when needed, and there are places in which force would be lost by dividing it into two or three successive and seriatim sentences. The following affords a fair example of a cumulative subject. It is all 'subject' down to the words printed in capitals.

The houses of the grandmothers and great-grandmothers of this generation, at least the country houses, with front-door and back-door always

standing open, winter and summer, and a thorough draught always blowing through; with all the scrubbing and cleaning and polishing and scouring which used to go on; the grandmothers and still more the great-grandmothers always out of doors and never with a bonnet on except to go to church; these things, when contrasted with our present civilized' habits, ENTIRELY ACCOUNT for the fact so often seen of a great-grandmother who was a tower of physical vigour, descending into a grandmother perhaps a little less vigorous but still sound as a bell and healthy to the core, into a mother languid and confined to her carriage and house, and lastly into a daughter sickly and confined to her bed.-Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing.

656. He who hopes that his writings may be an agreeable accompaniment to tea and bread-and-butter, may well adopt as his literary type the conversational sentences of Addison, the father of popular English literature, and the founder of easy writing for recreative study :

It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city enquiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me that there are already 3000 of them distributed every day; so that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I may reckon about three score thousand disciples in London and Westminster, who I hope will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and inattentive brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an audience I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reasons I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermittent starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them out of their desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is fallen. The mind that lies fallow for a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses.

I would, therefore, in a very particular manner, recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated families, that set apart an hour in every morning for tea and bread-and-butter; and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.-Spectator, No. 10.

But he who wishes for periods that will furnish a mental gymnastic, must read page after page of Milton's prose

works, or of Jeremy Taylor, where, amidst much that is almost chaotic in its irregular massiveness, he may from time to time fall in with such a piece of architecture as will reward his patient quest. If the following piece from the close of Milton's Reformation in England appears to the reader hardly to match this description, it will at least serve to give a taste of what a really great sentence can be.

Then, amidst the Hymns, and Halleluiahs of Saints some one may perhaps bee heard offering at high strains in new and lofty Measures to sing and celebrate thy divine Mercies, and marvelous Judgements in this Land throughout all AGES; whereby this great and Warlike Nation instructed and inur'd to the fervent and continuall practice of Truth and Righteousnesse, and casting farre from her the rags of her old vices, may presse on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian People at that day when thou the Eternall and shortly-expected King shalt open the Clouds to judge the severall Kingdomes of the World, and distributing Nationall Honours and Rewards to Religious and just Commonwealths, shalt put an end to all Earthly Tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and milde Monarchy through Heaven and Earth. Where they undoubtedly that by their Labours, Counsels, and Prayers, have been earnest for the Common good of Religion and their Countrey, shall receive, above the inferiour Orders of the Blessed, the Regall addition of Principalities, Legions, and Thrones into their glorious Titles, and in supereminence of beatifick Vision, progressing the datelesse and irrevoluble Circle of Eternity shall clasp inseparable Hands with joy, and blisse in over-measure for ever. [4to edit. Lond. 1641, p. 89.]

657. It is a gain to our general literature that the long sentence is but rarely used, for it is sorely out of place in ordinary writing, such as historical narrative, or any other kind that is produced at a moderate temperature. It is the defect of Clarendon's style that his sentences are too long for their energy. Long sentences are intolerable without enthusiasm. It is only under the glow of passion that the highest capabilities of a language are displayed. But the resources of modern syntax for continuous and protracted structure are so strong that to the beauty of the long sentence it is not necessary that the passion be at all furious, but only that the feeling be strong enough to sustain itself during the

flight from one resting-place to another. The following four stanzas from In Memoriam constitute but one period, which though quiet enough is yet well sustained :

LXXXV.

I past beside the reverend walls

In which of old I wore the gown;

I roved at random through the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;

And heard once more in college fanes

The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake

The prophets blazon'd on the panes ;

And caught once more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows; paced the shores

And many a bridge, and all about

The same gray flats again, and felt

The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past

To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

If we ask, What is this sustaining power, which bears along more than a hundred words in one movement, with all the unity of an individual organism? the answer is, that it is Rhythm.

658. If we want to see lengthiness of language carried out to an extreme and exaggerated development, unsupported moreover and unbalanced by rhythm, we have only to read a legal document, such as a marriage settlement, or a release of trust. Often whole lines are mere strings of words, till the reader's head swims with the fluctuations of the unstable element, and, like a man at sea, or in a balloon, he longs to plant his feet on terra firma.

And also of from and against all and all manner of actions and suits cause and causes of action and suit reckonings debts duties claims and demands whatsoever both at Law and in Equity which they the said releasing and covenanting parties or any or either of them their or any or either of

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