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last stanza but one. The euphony of the verse seemed to me to demand it. And this leads us back again to the beginning of our conversation. Here is an archaïsm which the rabble of sibilant sounds in our language not only excuses, but renders necessary, even if an argument might not be legitimately drawn from the loss which melody feels in the banishment of the soft termination th.

JOHN.

What a sweet fancy is that of Troilus about the wind! It reminds one of Romeo. I agree with

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you about the termination th, nor do I think that these little niceties and refinements of language are beneath the dignity of serious study and argument. A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.

PHILIP.

In many words this termination is necessary to give sufficient prolongation to the sound, as in "linger-eth," "murmur-eth," "wander-eth," "abid-eth," words denoting a continuance of action, and which are defrauded of their just amount of expression by being squeezed into a compacter form, and set off with the fizz of an s at the end, as in "wanders," " murmurs," and "lingers." Where plaintiveness of tone is demanded, the sweet gravity of this termination should always plead for its use. It is one of the excellencies of

our language. In some words it were manifestly out of place, as in "whistles," "stops," "hisses," "slides." In the dramatic form, too, it should be sparingly employed. There, we mostly want directness, plainness, and force, and such exquisiteness would seem like finery and foppishness. The sentiment, demanding, as it always does, the keenest and most delicate sympathy from the diction, must decide without appeal in such cases. Milton shows the sensitiveness of his ear most in his earlier poems, especially in "Comus " and "Lycidas." It is remarkable that his blindness seems rather to have lessened than increased this faculty in him. Perhaps our noble philanthrope, Dr. Howe, could explain this. His "Samson Agonistes" is singularly harsh and unmusical, and often far less metrical than the sonorous and enthusiastical sentences which jut out continually above the level of his prose. Coleridge well expressed Shakspeare's mastery over language, when he said that you could no more detrude a word from one of his verses, than you could push out a brick from the side of a house with your finger. Sometimes the language of a whole play seems to be pervaded and tempered by a prevailing sentiment. I have always thought so of that most sombre of his tragedies, "Richard the Second." There is little of his Titanic, heavenscaling boldness of metaphor and expression in it all is grave, subdued, and mournful, and you read it under your voice, as if in a funeral chamber.

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I fear that I have spoken too harshly of the letter s. It often adds much to the expression of a verse, in the word "silence," for example. It is only by the contrast of some slight noise that we can appreciate silence. A solitude is never so lonely as when the wind sighs through it. This is suggested to the ear, and so to the imagination, by the sound of the word. Keats, therefore, did well in bringing together such a cohort of s-s in the opening of his "Hyperion":

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'Deep in the shady stillness of a vale,

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, silent as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair."

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Do you not feel it? The whole passage, some distance farther on, is full of this sighing melody, and so impresses me with its utter loneliness and desertion, that, after repeating it to myself when alone, I am relieved to hear the companionable flicker of the fire, or the tinkling fall of an ember. The same is observable in the first lines of Drummond's Tenth Sonnet, and, indeed, throughout the whole of it:

"Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,

Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings."

Here we feel a kind of hushing sound, as if preluding sleep, conveyed by the s-s and the c-s. You must remember that I am speaking of silence as it impresses the ear only; for its effect often receives

a reinforcement from the eye also, as in the African deserts, which, though they seem the very extreme of stillness by day, when the eye can appreciate their utter loneliness, would not appear more hushed than this room in thorough darkness. In the same way that we estimate silence by contrast with the nearest possible approach to it in sound, do we measure darkness by a similar comparison with light. This Milton felt, when he said,

"No light, but rather darkness visible";

which could not be, except for some presence of light, like that which Spenser, impressed with the same feeling, calls

"A little glooming light, much like a shade."

There is a passage also in Thompson, who had a very nice ear, which is in point. You will see how

he changes from the roughness of the r to the smooth glide of the s.

"At last, the roused-up river pours along :
Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes
From the rude mountain and the mossy wild,

Tumbling through rocks abrupt, and sounding far;
Then o'er the sanded valley floating spreads,

Calm, sluggish, silent."

So, likewise, in the first four stanzas of Collins's most delicious "Ode to Evening," an ode impregnated with deep calm, and the verses of which seem like the arches of some deserted cloister, each growing silenter as you enter farther into their dim seclusion. I could easily cite passages from Shakspeare and Spenser, to show that they well

understood this secret. In the word "rustle," and others of the same kind, the s is full of meaning. Hawthorne, who has a right in any gathering of poets, will give me an example. It is from his wonderful "Hollow of the Three Hills.'

"Before them went the priest, reading the burial-service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the breeze."

The expression of the passage suffers by its being torn away from its context.

An air of silence pervades the whole. It is this property of the letters to give a feeling of stillness, or of such faint sounds as would be heard only when everything else is hushed, that takes away all force from words like "dissonance," which Milton sometimes introduces, as I think, unwisely, as in this passage from "Comus":

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"The wonted roar was up amongst the woods,

And filled the air with barbarous dissonance";

where it does not at all harmonize with the immediately-preceding "roar."

After all, it seems to me that there is no European language so rich in words that echo the sense and feeling as the English. The modern French assume a great license in inventing words of this kind, but their newness and want of previous association rob them of much of their force. We, it is true, have cheated the r of half its dignity; but in the Italian, where it is indulged and petted, it often disturbs much better company with its licensed brabblings.

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