Sixthly, a period consisting mostly of long syllables, that is, of syllables pronounced slow, produceth an emotion resembling faintly that which is produced by gravity and solemnity. Hence the beauty of the following verse.
Olli sedato respondit corde Latinus.
Seventhly, a slow succession of ideas is a circumstance that belongs equally to settled melancholy, and to a period composed of polysyllables pronounced slow. Hence, by similarity of emotions, the latter is imitative of the former:
In those deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav’nly-pensive Contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing Melancholy reigns.
Pope. Eloisa to Abelard.
Eighthly, a long syllable made short, or a short syllable made long, raises, by the difficulty of pronouncing contrary to custom, a feeling similar to that of hard labour:
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow.
Essay on Crit. 370.
Ninthly, harsh or rough words pronounced with difficulty, excite a feeling resembling that which proceeds from the labour of thought to a dull writer:
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a-year.
Pope’s epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, l. 181.
I shall close with one other example, which of all makes the finest figure. In the first section mention is made of a climax in sound, and in the second of a climax in sense. It belongs to the present subject to observe, that when these coincide in the same passage, the concordance of sound and sense is delightful. The reader is conscious not only of pleasure from the two climaxes separately, but of an additional pleasure from their concordance, and from finding the sense so justly imitated by the sound. In this respect, no periods are more perfect than those borrowed from Cicero in the first section.
The concord betwixt sense and sound is not less agreeable in what may be termed an anticlimax, where the progress is from great to little; for this has the effect to make diminutive objects appear still more diminutive. Horace affords a striking example: