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 Criticism, 370.
Ninthly, Harsh or rough words pronounced with difficulty, excite a feeling similar to 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.
We shall close with one example more, 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 of pleasure not only 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 between 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:
Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus.
The arrangement here is singularly artful: the first place is occupied by the verb, which is the capital word by its sense as well as sound: the close is reserved for the word that is the meanest in sense as well as in sound: and it must not be overlooked, that the resembling sounds of the two last syllables give a ludicrous air to the whole.
In this article we have mentioned none of the beauties of language but what arise from words, taken in their proper sense. Beauties that depend upon the metaphorical and figurative power of words, are treated under the separate articles of FIGURES, PERSONIFICATION, APOSTROPHE, HYPERBOLE, METAPHOR, &c. See also ORATORY.