One article with several adjectives.
437. Usually the article is not repeated when the several adjectives unite in describing one and the same noun. In the sentences of Secs. 433 and 436, one noun is expressed; yet the same word understood with the other adjectives has a different meaning (except in the first sentence of Sec. 436). But in the following sentences, as in the first three of Sec. 435, the adjectives assist each other in describing the same noun. It is easy to see the difference between the expressions "a red-and-white geranium," and "a red and a white geranium."
Examples of several adjectives describing the same object:—
To inspire us with a free and quiet mind.—B. Jonson.
Here and there a desolate and uninhabited house.—Dickens.
James was declared a mortal and bloody enemy.—Macaulay.
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
—Dryden.
For rhetorical effect.
438. The indefinite article (compare Sec. 434) is used to lend special emphasis, interest, or clearness to each of several nouns; as,—
James was declared a mortal and bloody enemy, a tyrant, a murderer, and a usurper.—Macaulay.