The opposition would have been more completely expressed in this manner: "The laughers will be for those who have most wit; the serious, for those who have most reason on their side."

In the following passage, we find two great poets very skilfully contrasted with each other.

Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the better artist; in the one, we most admire the man, in the other the work. Homer hurries us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty. Homer scatters with a generous profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence. Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches with a sudden overflow; Virgil, like a river in its banks, with a constant stream.-Pope's Preface to Homer.

This picture, however, would have been more finished, if to the Nile some particular river had been opposed,

HARMONY IN THE STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES.

ALTHOUGH Sound is a quality of much less importance. than sense, yet it must not be altogether disregarded; for as sounds are the vehicle of our ideas, there must always be an intimate connexion between the idea which is conveyed, and the sound employed in its conveyance. Pleasing ideas can hardly be transmitted to the mind by means of harsh and disagreeable sounds. At these the mind immediately revolts. Nothing can enter into the affections which stumbles at the threshold by offending the ear. Music has naturally a great power over all men to prompt and facilitate certain emotions; insomuch that there are scarcely any dispositions which we wish to raise in others, but certain sounds may be found concordant to those dispositions, and tending to excite and promote them. Language is

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to a certain degree possessed of the same power: not content with simply interpreting our ideas to the hearer, it can enforce them by corresponding sounds; and to the pleasure of imparted knowledge, can add the new and separate pleasure of melody.

In the harmony of sentences, two circumstances may be considered; agreeable sound, or modulation, in general, without any particular expression, and sound so regulated as to become expressive of the sense.

Let us first consider sound in general, as the property of a well-constructed sentence. The musical cadence of a sentence will depend upon two circumstances; the choice of words, and the arrangement of them.

With regard to the choice of words, little can be said, unless we descend into tedious details concerning the powers of the several letters, or simple sounds, of which speech is composed. It is evident that those words are most agreeable to the ear which are composed of smooth and liquid sounds, where there is a proper intermixture of vowels and consonants, without too many harsh consonants clashing with each other, or too many open vowels in succession causing a hiatus. It may always be assumed as a principle, that whatever words are difficult in pronunciation, are, in the same proportion, harsh and painful to the ear. Vowels add softness, consonants strength to the sound of words. The melody of language requires a due proportion of both, and will be destroyed by an excess of either. Long words are commonly more agreeable to the ear than monosyllables: they please it by the succession of sounds which they present; and accordingly the most. musical languages possess them in the greatest abundance. Among words of any length, those are the most musical which do not wholly consist of either long or short syllables, but contain a due intermixture of both.

The English language abounds with monosyllables, more particularly that portion of the language which is derived from the Anglo-Saxon; and the difficulty of forming an harmonious combination of so many short

words, is a frequent reason for preferring those derived from Latin and Greek. The following sentence contains no fewer than twenty-nine monosyllables in uninterrupted succession: "And he answering, said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."*

The harmony which results from a proper arrangement of the words and members of a period, is a more complex subject. However well-chosen and well-sounding the words themselves may be, yet if they be awkwardly disposed, the music of the sentence is utterly lost. In the harmonious arrangement of his periods, no writer, ancient or modern, can be brought into competition with Cicero: this subject he has studied with the utmost care; and he was fond, perhaps to excess, of what he calls the " plena ac numerosa oratio." We need only open his writings, to find instances that will render the effect of musical cadence sensible to every ear. And in our own language, the following passage may be quoted as an instance of harmonious construction.

We shall conduct you to a hillside, laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.-Milton's Tractate of Education.

Every thing in this sentence conspires to promote the harmony. The words are happily chosen, being full of soft and liquid sounds; laborious, smooth, green, goodly, melodious, charming; and those words are so skilfully arranged, that, were we to alter the collocation of any of them, the melody would sustain a sensible injury. The members of the period swell beautifully, one above another, till the ear, prepared by this gradual rise, is conducted to that full close on which it always rests with pleasure.

*St. Luke, x. 27.-Wycliffe's version is not materially different: "He answerde and seide, thou schalt loue thi Lord God of alle thin herte, and of alle thi soule, and of all thi strengthis, and of alle thi mynde; and the neighbore as thi silf."

The structure of sentences, then, being susceptible of very considerable melody, our next enquiry should be, how this melodious structure is formed, what are its principles, and by what laws it is regulated. This subject has been treated with great copiousness by the ancient critics. But the languages of Greece and Rome were more susceptible than ours, of the graces and powers of melody. The quantities of their syllables. were more fixed and determinate; their words were longer, and more sonorous; their method of varying the terminations of nouns and verbs both introduced a greater variety of liquid sounds, and freed them from that multiplicity of little auxiliary words which we are under the necessity of employing; and, what is of the greatest consequence, the inversions which their languages allowed, gave them the power of placing their words in whatever order was most suited to a musical arrangement. In consequence of the structure of their languages, and of their manner of pronouncing them, the musical cadence of sentences produced a greater effect in public speaking among them, than it could possibly do among any modern people. It is further to be observed, that for every species of music they had a finer relish than prevails among us: it was more generally studied, and applied to a greater variety of objects. Our northern ears are too coarse and obtuse. And by our simple and plainer method of pronunciation, speech is accompanied with less melody than it was among the Greeks and Romans.

For these reasons, it would be fruitless to bestow the same attention upon the harmonious structure of our sentences, as was bestowed by those ancient nations. The doctrine of the Greek and Roman critics, on this head, has induced some to imagine that our prose writings may be regulated by spondees, and trochees, iambuses and pæons, and other metrical feet. But, to

*The reader may consult Dionysius Halicarnassensis de Structura Orationis, Demetrius Phalereus de Elocutione, Hermogenes de Formis Oratoriis, Cicero de Oratore, and Quinctilian de Institutione Oratoria. The subject is briefly discussed by Aristotle, de Rhetorica, lib. iii. cap. vili.

refute this notion, nothing further is necessary than its being applied to practice. In the classical language of antiquity, the length of every syllable is regulated and ascertained: but modern languages being differently organized, do not admit of the same degree of nicety; and no success has yet attended any project of making English verses move on Roman feet. Although English words contain long and short syllables, yet the quantity of every syllable is not fixed by specific rules; and the harmony of English verse depends rather upon accent than quantity. If the rules of ancient prosody cannot be applied to English verse, it is scarcely to be expected that they should be applied to English prose.

Here it may be incidentally mentioned, as a subject of some curiosity, that the ancient rhetoricians, and even Aristotle himself, have enumerated an occasional recurrence of the same sound among the graces of oratorical composition. If the Greeks approved of rhyming clauses of a sentence in prose, it may naturally enough be supposed that they did not disapprove of rhyming verses in poetry; and we accordingly find that an ancient biographer of Homer has particularized the admission of rhyming verses as one of the various merits of his poetry. It is indeed obvious to every reader of his works that such verses are very numerous: how far they are to be ascribed to accident or to design, we cannot so easily determine; but when critics and rhetoricians commended poets and orators for this introduction of rhyming verses and clauses, they evidently presupposed a deliberate intention of producing what they considered as a pleasing effect.

Although the musical arrangement of English prose cannot be easily reduced to a system, it yet demands a very considerable share of attention. It is in a great degree owing to the neglect of melody, that British eloquence still remains in a state of immaturity. The growth of eloquence, indeed, even in those countries where it chiefly flourished, has ever been very slow.

Aristotle de Rhetorica, lib. iii. cap. ix. p. 223.