The ear is dull which does not perceive the difference between this and the sentence as Newman wrote it:—
If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that art did much more.
Examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but it is better that the student find them for himself. Sensitiveness to euphony and the practical acquirement of a euphonious style are greatly aided by the habit of reading aloud the works of men who are masters, and it is well to test in the same way whatever is written. The ear is more readily trained by the voice than by any other means. It is possible to suppose that what we have written must sound well as a matter of course; but if we read or hear it read aloud, and find that it does not please the ear, only one stupid with self-conceit will leave it unaltered. A melodious diction is apt to be made up more largely of short words than of long ones, and of words easily pronounced than of those trying to the tongue; yet it is no more possible to achieve a euphonious style simply by using words short and easily pronounced than it is to make a beautiful brook by digging a channel which shall be entirely straight and free from obstructions, or to build a beautiful temple by collecting exquisite marbles. Construction is more than material.
One of the means by which it was formerly the fashion to strive after pleasing sound in diction was the use of alliteration. This device is somewhat in disrepute in these days, because it has been so notoriously abused. The sensational novelist could no more do without alliteration than without the historical present tense. The patent medicines are alliteratively labeled; comic operas and pseudo-Queen Anne cottages at little watering-places have been baptized with titles with reduplicated initials, until the writer who indulges in alliteration feels something as does the professor who sees his title blazoned on the shingle of the barber and the boot-black.
Yet this pleasant device cannot be spared. There is in our blood some trace of the fondness for it which made it serve the old bards instead of rhyme. It must be employed more cunningly than of old, and as it were slipped into the literary web surreptitiously. Here are instances:—
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.—Emerson: History.
In making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all.—Lowell: New England Two Centuries Ago.
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.—Id.: Rousseau and the Sentimentalists.
Here there is little more than the repetition of the initial of a prominent word, marked by the same place in successive cadences. Often alliteration in modern prose of the best sort is carried much farther. Here are a couple of examples from Stevenson:—