clearly, and were they, at the same time, fully masters of the Language in which they write, there would be occasion for few rules. Their sentences would then, of course, acquire all those properties of Precision, Unity, and Strength, which I have recommended. For we may rest assured, that, whenever we express ourselves ill, there is, besides the mismanagement of Language, for the most part, some mistake in our manner of conceiving the subject. Embarrassed, obscure, and feeble sentences, are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure, and feeble thought. Thought and language act and re-act upon each other mutually. Logic and Rhetoric have here, as in many other cases, a strict connexion; and he that is learning to arrange his sentences with accuracy and order, is learning at the same time to think with accuracy and order; an observation which alone will justify all the care and attention we have bestowed on this subject.

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 Quinctilian, "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

Nothing can enter into the affections, which stumbles at the threshold, by offending the ear."

sounds; and to the pleasure of communicated 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 of 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 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 fourth Oration against Catiline? "Cogitate quantis labori

M

bus fundatum imperium, quantâ virtute stabilitam libertatem, quantâ Deorum benignitate auctas exaggeratasque fortunas, una nox pene delerit." In English, we may take for an instance of 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 liquids 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 finely the members of the Period swell one above another. "So smooth, so green,”—“ 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."

SO

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 is it regulated? And, upon this subject, were I to follow the ancient rhetoricians, it would be easy to give a great variety of rules. For 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 Quinctilian are full of this. The other qualities of Precision, Unity, and Strength, which we consider as of great 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 us. 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 inflamed 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. Quinctilian, 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 Quinctilian, 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 inflexions of voice, than we use; this is one clear reason of their paying a great attention to that construction of Sentences, which might best suit this musical pronunciation.

It is further 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 aptè 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 comprobravit. ' By means of the sound of which, alone, he tells us, "Tantus clamor concionis excitatus est, ut prorsus admirabile esset." He makes us remark the feet of which these words consist, to which he ascribes the power of the melody; and shows how, by altering the collocation, the whole effect would be lost; as thus: "Patris dictum sapiens comprobravit temeritas filii.” Now, though it be true that Carbo's Sentence is extremely musical, and would be agreeable at this day, to an audience, yet I cannot believe that an English Sentence, equally harmonious, would by its harmony alone, produce any such effect on a British audience, or excite any such wonderful applause and admiration, as Cicero informs us this of Carbo produced. Our northern ears are too coarse and obtuse. The melody of Speech has less power over us; and by our simpler and plainer method of uttering words, Speech is, in truth, accompanied with less melody than it was among the Greeks and Romans.†

For these reasons, I am of opinion, that it is vain to think of bestowing the same attention upon the harmonious structure of

"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."

"In versu quidem, theatra tota exclamant si fuit una syllaba aut brevior aut longior. Nec vero multitudo pedis novit, nec ullos numeros tenet; nec illud quod offendit, aut cur, aut in quo offendat, intelligit; et tamen omnium longitudinum et brevitatum in sonis, sicut acutarum, graviumque vocum, judicium ipsa natura in auribus nostris collocavit." CICERO, Orator, c. 51.