And thunder....
And all the plain—brand, mace, and shaft, and shield
Shock’d, like an iron-clanging anvil banged
With hammers;
or the booming of the sea, in—
Roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves;
or, finally, what can be more perfect than the graphic power in which the picture of a fleet of glass wrecked on a reef of gold is called before us by the perfect adaptation of sound to sense, in the lines—
For the fleet drew near,
Touched, clinked, and clashed, and vanished.
Yet in all these cases we believe that it is to the language and not to the poet that the main credit is due. The language is the perfect instrument, and in the poet’s hands it is used with perfect power; but were it not for the original perfection of his instrument he would be unable to produce such rich and varied results; he would be unable to place the picture before the eye by bringing into play that swift and subtle law of association whereby a reproduction of the sounds at once recalls to the inner eye the images or circumstances with which they are connected. In every case the consummate art and skill of the writer consists simply in choosing the proper words for the thought which he wishes to express, which words are always the simplest. Appropriate[127] language is and always must be the most effective, and when a writer clearly goes out of his way to produce an effect he generally loses his effectiveness by abandoning simplicity. How much onomatopœia degenerates in a less skilful and artistic hand we might see in many instances, were not the selection of them an invidious task.