How is this remark illustrated? How | How would the two circumstances, will this be made clearer? Repeat it. Of some time ago, and in conversation, this sentence, what is observed? What have had a better effect? What furdoes it contain; yet of these, what is ther illustration is given from Lord remarked? Further to illustrate this Bolingbroke; and how may the arsubject, what different arrangement is rangement be improved? What is the given; and what is said of it? What last rule given, relating to the strength is the fourth rule for constructing sen- of a sentence? Why is this rule given? tences with strength? What is it call- When it is otherwise, what is the coned; and how is it always considered? sequence? Thus, what says Lord BoWhy does this sort of arrangement lingbroke; and how might the opposiplease? What says Quintilian? Of this tion have been rendered more complete? beauty, whose orations furnish us with Repeat the passage from Mr. Pope's many examples? What naturally led preface to his Homer, which fully exhim to the study of it; and what does emplifies this rule? Of periods, thus he generally do? What instance is constructed, what is remarked; but of given from him, and also from Lord what must we beware? When only Bolingbroke? What observation must, ought it to be studied? If such a conhowever, be made? What remark fol- struction be aimed at in all our sentenlows? What is there approaching to a ces, what will be the consequence? Of climax, which it is a general rule to the style of Isocrates, among the anfollow? What twofold reason is there cients, what is remarked? This refor this last direction? What illustra-mark, finishes what? For what two tion follows? In general, what is al- reasons has our author insisted on this ways agreeable? What illustration of subject fully; and why? How is this this remark is given from Mr. Addison? illustrated? In what does every one What is the fifth rule for the strength feel this; and what follows? What is of sentences? Of such conclusions, the fundamental rule for the construcwhat is observed? There are sentences tion of sentences? What arrangements of what kind; and in this case, what follows? What illustration is given from Lord Bolingbroke? Of what parts of speech does our author now speak; and how should they always be disposed? Agreeably to this rule, what should we always avoid? What instance is noticed? Why do all correct writers shun this phraseology? For the same reason, what verbs should we not employ in closing sentences? In preference to which, what should be used? Of the pronoun it, as a closing word, what is remarked; and when, especially, should it be avoided? In what noble sentence from the Spectator, is the bad effect of this close sensibly perceived? With what word should it have closed? Besides particles and pronouns, what always brings up the rear of a sentence with a bad grace? By what sentence may we judge of this? Of the last phrase, to say no more, what is observed? With what is the proper disposition of such circumstances in a sentence often attended; and why? What says Quintilian? When the sense admits it, where should they be placed? On this subject, what rule is given; and with what provision? What instance follows? strike us as beautiful; and to this point, what have tended? Under what circumstances, would there be occasion for few rules? What properties would their sentences then acquire; and why? Of what are embarrassed, obscure, and feeble sentences, the result? What have here astrict connexion; and what follows? ANALYSIS. Strength. 1. Redundant words. A. Redundant members. A. The splitting of particles. c. The copulative and. D. Copulatives further illustrated. 3. The proper disposition of the capital words. A. The advantages of the Greek and Latin languages. B. The subject further illustrated. 4. The order of succession in sentences. 5. Sentences not to be concluded with adverbs, &c. 6. Similarity of language in contrast- LECTURE XIII. STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES....HARMONY. HITHERTO We have considered sentences, with respect to their meaning, under the heads of perspicuity, unity, and strength. We are now to consider them, with respect to their sound, their harmony or agreeableness to the ear; which was the last quality belonging to them that I proposed to treat of. Sound is a quality much inferior to sense; yet such as must not be disregarded. For, as long as sounds are the vehicle of conveyance for our ideas, there will be always a very considerable connexion between the idea which is conveyed, and the nature of the sound which conveys it. Pleasing ideas can hardly be transmitted to the mind by means of harsh and disagreeable sounds. The imagination revolts as soon as it hears them uttered. Nihil,' says Quintilian, 'potest intrare in affectum, quod in aure, velut quodam vestibulo, statim offendit."* Music has naturally a great power over all men, to prompt and facilitate certain emotions; insomuch, that there are hardly any dispositions which we wish to raise in others, but certain sounds may be found concordant to those dispositions, and tending to promote them. Now, language may, in some degree, be rendered capable of this power of music; a circumstance which must needs heighten our idea of language as a wonderful invention. Not content with simply interpreting our ideas to others, it can give them those ideas enforced by corresponding sounds; and, to the pleasure of communicating thought, can add the new and separate pleasure of melody. In the harmony of periods, two things may be considered. First, agreeable sound, or modulation in general, without any particular expression: Next, the sound so ordered, as to become expressive of the sense. The first is the more common; the second, the higher beauty. First, let us consider agreeable sound, in general, as the property of a well-constructed sentence: and, as it was of prose sentences we have hitherto treated, we shall confine ourselves to them under this head. This beauty of musical construction in prose, it is plain, will depend upon two things; the choice cf words, and the arrangement of them. I begin with the choice of words; on which head, there is not much to be said, unless I were to descend into a tedious and frivolous detail concerning the powers of the several letters, or simple sounds, of which speech is composed. It is evident, that words Nothing can enter into the affections, which stumbles at the threshold by offen ding the ear.' 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 rubbing against each other; or too many open vowels in succession, to cause a hiatus, or disagreeable aperture of the mouth. It may always be assumed as a principle, that whatever sounds are difficult in pronunciation, are, in the same proportion, harsh and painful to the ear. Vowels give softness; consonants, strength to the sound of words. The music of language requires a just proportion of both; and will be hurt, will be rendered either grating or effeminate, by an excess of either. Long words are commonly more agreeable to the ear than monosyllables. They please it by the composition, or succession of sounds which they present to it: and accordingly, the most musical languages abound most in them. Among words of any length, those are the most musical, which do not run wholly either upon long or short syllables, but are composed of an intermixture of them; such as repent, produce, velocity, celerity, independent, impetuosity. The next head, respecting the harmony which results from a proper arrangement of the words and members of a period, is more complex, and of greater nicety. For, let the words themselves be ever so well chosen, and well sounding, yet, if they be ill disposed, the music of the sentence is utterly lost. In the harmonious structure and disposition of periods, no writer whatever, ancient or modern, equals Cicero. He had studied this with care; and 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 language sensible to every ear. What, for example, can be more full, round, and swelling, than the following sentence of the 4th Oration against Catiline? Cogitate quantis laboribus fundatum imperium, quantâ virtute stabilitam libertatem, quanta Deorum benignitate auctas exaggeratasque fortunas, una nox pene delerit.' In English, we may take, for an instance of a musical sentence, the following from Milton, in his Treatise on Education: 'We shall conduct you to a hill-side, 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.' Every thing in this sentence conspires to promote the harmony. The words are happily chosen ; full of liquid and soft sounds; laborious, smooth, green, goodly, melodious, charming: and these words so artfully arranged, that were we to alter the collocation of any one of them, we should, presently, be sensible of the melody suffering. For, let us observe, how tinely the members of the period swell one above another. 'So smooth, so green'-'so full of goodly prospects, and melodious sounds on every side;'-till the ear, prepared by this gradual rise, is conducted to that full close on which it rests with pleasure;-'that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.' The structure of periods, then, being susceptible of a very sensible melody, our next inquiry should be, how this melodious structure is formed, what are the principles of it, and by what laws For it is regulated? And, upon this subject, were I to follow the ancient rhetoricians, it would be easy to give a great variety of rules. here they have entered into a very minute and particular detail; more particular, indeed, than on any other head that regards language. They hold, that to prose as well as to verse, there belong certain numbers, less strict, indeed, yet such as can be ascertained by rule. They go so far as to specify the feet as they are called, that is, the succession of long and short syllables, which should enter into the different members of a sentence, and to show what the effect of each of these will be. Wherever they treat of the structure of sentences, it is always the music of them that makes the principal object. Cicero and Quintilian are full of this. The other qualities of precision, unity, and strength, which we consider as of chief importance, they handle slightly; but when they come to the junctura et numerus,' the modulation and harmony, there they are copious. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, one of the most judicious critics of antiquity, has written a treatise on the Composition of Words in a Sentence, which is altogether confined to their musical effect. He makes the excellency of a sentence to consist in four things; first, in the sweetness of single sounds; secondly, in the composition of sounds, that is, the numbers or feet; thirdly, in change or variety of sound; and fourthly, in sound suited to the sense. On all these points he writes with great accuracy and refinement: and is very worthy of being consulted; though were one now to write a book on the structure of sentences, we should expect to find the subject treated of in a more extensive manner. In modern times, this whole subject of the musical structure of discourse, it is plain, has been much less studied; and indeed, for several reasons, can be much less subjected to rule. The reasons, it will be necessary to give, both to justify my not following the tract of the ancient rhetoricians on this subject, and to show how it has come to pass, that a part of composition, which once made so conspicuous a figure, now draws much less attention. In the first place, the ancient languages, I mean the Greek and the Roman, were much more susceptible than ours, of the graces and the powers of melody. The quantities of their syllables were more fixed and determined; 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 obliged to employ; 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. All these were great advantages which they enjoyed above us, for harmony of period. In the next place, the Greeks and Romans, the former especially, were, in truth, much more musical nations than we; their genius was more turned to delight in the melody of speech. Music is known to have been a more extensive art among them than it is with us; more generally studied, and applied to a greater variety of objects. Several learned men, particularly the Abbé du Bos, in his Reflections on Poetry and Painting, have clearly proved, that the theatrical compositions of the ancients, both their tragedies and comedies, were set to a kind of music. Whence the modos fecit, and the tibiis dextris et sinistris, prefixed to the editions of Terence's plays. All sort of declamation and public speaking, was carried on by them in a much more musical tone than it is among It approached to a kind of chanting or recitative. Among the Athenians, there was what was called the Nomic melody; or a particular measure prescribed to the public officers, in which they were to promulgate the laws to the people; lest, by reading them with improper tones, the laws might be exposed to contempt. Among the Romans, there is a noted story of C. Gracchus, when he was declaiming in public, having a musician standing at his back, in order to give him the proper tones with a pipe or flute. Even when pronouncing those terrible tribunitial harangues, by which he in flamed the one half of the citizens of Rome against the other; this attention to the music of speech was, in those times, it seems, thought necessary to success. Quintilian, though he condemns the excess of this sort of pronunciation, yet allows a cantus obscurior' to be a beauty in a public speaker. Hence, that variety of accents, acute, grave, and circumflex, which we find marked upon the Greek syllables, to express, not the quantity of them, but the tone in which they were to be spoken; the application of which is now wholly unknown to us. And though the Romans did not mark those accents in their writing, yet it appears from Quintilian, that they used them in pronunciation: Quantum quale,' says he, 'comparantes gravi, interrogantes acuto tenore concludunt.' As, music, then, was an object much more attended to in speech, among the Greeks and Romans, than it is with us; as, in all kinds of public speaking, they employed a much greater variety of notes, of tones or inflections of voice, than we use; this is one clear reason of their paying a greater attention to that construction of sentences, which might best suit this musical pronunciation. It is farther known, that, in consequence of the genius of their languages, and of their manner of pronouncing them, the musical arrangement of sentences did, in fact, produce a greater effect in public speaking among them, than it could possibly do in any modern oration; another reason why it deserved to be more studied. Cicero, in his treatise, entitled, Orator, tells us, 'Conciones sæpe exclamare vidi, cum verba apte cecidissent. Id enim expectant aures.'* And he gives a remarkable instance of the effect of an harmonious period upon a whole assembly, from a sentence of one of Carbo's orations, spoken in his hearing. The sentence was, Patris dictum sapiens temeritas filii comprobavit.' By means of the sound of which, alone, he tells us, 'Tantus clamor concionis * 'I have often been witness to bursts of exclamation in the public assemblies, when sentences closed musically; for that is a pleasure which the ear expects.' |