The variation of form is an art more cunning than that of the changing of the word. Look at this sentence from Stevenson, and notice how much is gained by the alteration of the construction:—
How often and willingly do I not look in fancy on Tummel, or Manor, or the talking Ardle, or Dee swirling in its Lynn; on the bright burn of Kinnaird, or the golden burn that pours and sulks in the den behind Kingussie!—Pastoral.
To put “talking” before its noun and “swirling” after the substantive it modifies, to see to it that no two phrases shall have the same form, may seem small matters, and yet it is by devices of this sort that the skillful artificer of words gives to his style finish and charm.
The ability to command a variety of forms gives to the writer the power of repetition without seeming to repeat. Often it happens that it is well to re-say a thing, either for the sake of putting it in a light somewhat different from that of its first presentation, or to enforce it more strongly. This is especially true, it may be, of writing which is expository or argumentative, but the need of repetition of ideas is common to composition of all sorts. To vary the cadence of the sentence so that the ear shall never be wearied by monotony, cunningly to mix long and short paragraphs so that no single form constantly repeated shall tire the attention, is indeed a difficult art to acquire. No rule can be given for variety; the very idea of rule for variation involves a contradiction of terms, since it is the essence of variation to be irregular. The student must train his ear and his mind by reading the best authors; but the most that instruction can do is to call attention to this matter, and thus to afford a clue to what may be the real if unsuspected cause of a writer’s dissatisfaction when his work appears vaguely dull and unattractive. Variety is closely connected with Elegance. The adaptation of the sentence structure to the thought, and yet more the subtler adaptation to the mood, are refinements of composition which it takes long to acquire; but with every advance toward a mastery of them the learner has come nearer to the secret of that consummate skill in fitting means to effects which is the soul of the highest style. Each must do it for himself; for the secret of variety cannot be told farther than it is revealed in the words of Stevenson, with which we began: “The one rule is to be infinitely various.”
Upon variety depends largely that delightful and elusive quality which we call Euphony. No writer or reader can be long insensible to that music of words which is as intangibly tangible in prose as in poetry,—different in the one from the other, but as real and truly a source of delight in speech as in song, in prose as in verse. It is true that what is written is not necessarily read aloud. It is written in silence, and untrained writers fail to realize that although it be read in silence, the eye is the ear of the mind, and all melody or lack of melody will be subtilely felt in the soundless perusal. All that has been said of variety applies as well to this quality; and, indeed, it is perhaps hardly necessary to give two names where the two things are so closely interwoven.
Intangible as this quality may seem, it is yet one of the most striking in literature. Take this sentence from Walt Whitman, and see if it is possible for any reader not to be offended by its close:—
Nor shades of Virgil, nor myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her.
Or suppose one said:—
If for the city of Athens nature did much, it is not to be denied that art did a great deal more.