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of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses.
Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be
carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call
literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to
plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that
each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind
of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and
clear itself. In every properly constructed sentence there should
be observed this knot or hitch; so that (however delicately) we are
led to foresee, to expect, and then to welcome the successive
phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an element of surprise,
as, very grossly, in the common figure of the antithesis, or, with
much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first suggested and
then deftly evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely in
itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the
sentence there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for
nothing more often disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and
sonorously prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should
the balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be
infinitely various; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, and
yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were, the stitch,
and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness.
The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in
beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an instant
overlooked or sacrificed. So with the writer. His pattern, which
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