riters, indeed, are
probably conscious of the length to which they push this melody of
letters. One, writing very diligently, and only concerned about the
meaning of his words and the rhythm of his phrases, was struck into
amazement by the eager triumph with which he cancelled one expression
to substitute another. Neither changed the sense; both being
mono-syllables, neither could affect the scansion; and it was only by
looking back on what he had already written that the mystery was solved:
the second word contained an open A, and for nearly half a page he had
been riding that vowel to the death.

In practice, I should add, the ear is not always so exacting; and
ordinary writers, in ordinary moments, content themselves with avoiding
what is harsh, and here and there, upon a rare occasion, buttressing a
phrase, or linking two together, with a patch of assonance or a
momentary jingle of alliteration. To understand how constant is this
preoccupation of good writers, even where its results are least
obtrusive, it is only necessary to turn to the bad. There, indeed, you
will find cacophony supreme, the rattle of incongruous consonants only
relieved by the jaw-breaking hiatus, and whole phrases not to be
articulated by the powers of man.

_Conclusion_.--We may now briefly enumerate the elements of style. We
have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases
large, rhythmical and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to
fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of
combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern,
feet and groups, logic and metre--harmonious in diversity: common to
both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into
phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their
argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods--but
this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to
both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words. We
begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how
many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the
stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so
complete a pleasure. From the arrangement of according letters, which
is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the
elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure
intellect, there