There
are certain large classes of people, for example, who persist in
emphasizing their monosyllables. Little uniformity of emphasis
prevails; because the thing itself- the idea, emphasis- is referabie
to no natural- at least to no well comprehended and therefore
uniform-law. Beyond a very narrow and vague limit, the whole matter is
conventionality. And if we differ in emphasis even when we agree in
comprehension, how much more so in the former when in the latter
too! Apart, however, from the consideration of natural disagreement,
is it not clear that, by tripping here and mouthing there, any
sequence of words may be twisted into any species of rhythm? But are
we thence to deduce that all sequences of words are rhythmical in a
rational understanding of the term?- for this is the deduction
precisely to which the reductio ad absurdum will, in the end, bring
all the propositions of Coleridge. Out of a hundred readers of
"Christabel," fifty will be able to make nothing of its rhythm,
while forty-nine of the remaining fifty with some ado, fancy they
comprehend it, after the fourth or fifth perusal. The one out of the
whole hundred who shall both comprehend and admire it at first
sight- must be an unaccountably clever person- and I am by far too
modest to assume, for a moment, that that very clever person is
myself.
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