A friend exaggerates a man's virtues, an enemy enflames is crimes.-Addison, Spectator.

Here the opposition in the thought is neglected in the words, which at first view seem to import, that the friend and the enemy are employed in different matters, without any relation to each other, whether of res mblance or of opposition. The contrast will be better marked by expressing the idea as follows: "A friend exaggerates a man's virtues, an enemy his crimes."

The wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation: the fool when he recommends himself to the applause of those about him.-Spectator.

This sentence might have stood thus: " the wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation; the fool, when he gains that of others."

The laughers will be for those who have most wit: the serious part of mankind for those who have most reason on their side.— Bolingbroke's Dissertation on Parties.

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 must 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.

CHAP.

CHAP. XI.

OF 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 a pretty intimate connexion between the idea which is conveyed, and the sound which conveys it. 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 to a certain degree possessed of the same power. Not content with simply interpreting our ideas to the hearer, it can communicate them inforced 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 things may be considered; agreeable sound, or modulation, in general, without any particular expression, and sound so ordered as to become expressive of the sense.

Let

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 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 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, to cause a hiatus or disagreeable aperture of the mouth. 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 either of long or short syllables, but contain a due in. termixture of both.

The harmony which results from a proper arrangement of the words and members of a period, is a more

complex

complex subject. However well chosen and wellsounding the words themselves may be, yet if they be ill-disposed, the music of the sentence is utterly lost. In the harmonious arrangements of his periods, no writer, ancient or modern, can be brought into com petition with Cicero. He has studied this with the utmost 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 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 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.-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 these words are su skilfully arranged, that, were we to alter the collocation of any one of them, the melody would sustain a sensible injury. The members of the period swell beau tifully above each other, till the ear, prepared by this gradual rise, it conducted to that full close on which it always rests with pleasure.

The structure of sentences, then, being susceptibl▾ of very considerable melody, our next inquiry should be, how this melodious structure is formed, what are its principles, and by what law it is regulated. This sub ject has been treated with great copiousness by the an

cient 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 the 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 in any modern oration. 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 metho. 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,

The reader may consult Dionysius De Structurú Orationés, Demetrius De Elocutione, Cicero De Oratore, and Quintilian De Insitutione Orateria.