we can convince ourselves by our dissatisfaction with any
emendation made by a contemporary poet in his verses. Posterity may
think he has improved them, but we are jarred by any change in the old
tune. Even without any habitual association, we cannot help recognizing
a certain power over our fancy in mere words. In verse almost every ear
is caught with the sweetness of alliteration. I remember a line in
Thomson's "Castle of Indolence" which owes much of its fascination to
three _m's_, where he speaks of the Hebrid Isles

Far placed amid the melancholy main.

I remember a passage in Prichard's "Races of Man" which had for me all
the moving quality of a poem. It was something about the Arctic regions,
and I could never read it without the same thrill. Dr. Prichard was
certainly far from being an inspired or inspiring author, yet there was
something in those words, or in their collocation, that affected me as
only genius can. It was probably some dimly felt association, something
like that strange power there is in certain odors, which, in themselves
the most evanescent and impalpable of all impressions on the senses,
have yet a wondrous magic in recalling, and making present to us, some
forgotten experience.

Milton understood the secret of memory perfectly well, and his poems are
full of those little pitfalls for the fancy. Whatever you have read,
whether in the classics, or in medieval romance, all is there to stir
you with an emotion not always the less strong because indefinable. Gray
makes use of the same artifice, and with the same success.

There is a charm in the arrangement of words also, and that not only in
verse, but in prose. The finest prose is subject to the laws of metrical
proportion. For example, in the song of Deborah and Barak: "Awake,
awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, utter a song! Arise, Barak, and lead thy
captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam!" Or again, "At her feet he
bowed; he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he
bowed, there he fell down dead."

Setting aside, then, all charm of association, all the influence to
which we are unconsciously subjected by melody, by harmony, or even by
the mere sound of words, we may say that style is distinguished from
manner by the author's power of projecting his own emotion into what he
writes. The stylist is occupied with the impression which certain things
have made upon him; the mannerist is wholly concerned with the
impression he