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keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is essential to all
writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of
the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of
philosophic expatiation. "It cannot be doubted," says one whose daily
meditations enrich The People's Post-Bag, "that Fear is, to a great
extent, the mother of Cruelty." Alas, by the introduction of that brief
proviso, conceived in a spirit of admirably cautious self-defence, the
writer has unwittingly given himself to the horns of a dilemma whose
ferocity nothing can mitigate. These tempered and conditional truths
are not in nature, which decrees, with uncompromising dogmatism, that
either a woman is one's mother, or she is not. The writer probably
meant merely that "fear is one of the causes of cruelty," and had he
used a colourless abstract word the platitude might pass unchallenged.
But a vague desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having
brought in the word "mother," has yet failed to set the sluggish
imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid
with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted
usage to mean no more than "cause" or "occasion." Only for the poet,
perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden

with scent; yet one poor spark of imagination might save them from
this sad descent to sterility and darkness.
Of no less import is the power of melody which chooses, rejects, and
orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly varied return of sound
can give to the ear. Some critics have amused themselves with the hope
that here, in the laws and practices regulating the audible cadence of
words, may be found the first principles of style, the form which
fashions the matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make
an art of truth. And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a
professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes carries its
devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and the thing said
seems a discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful
expression.
What thing unto mine ear Wouldst thou convey,--what secret thing, O
wandering water ever whispering? Surely thy speech shall be of her,
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer, What message dost thou
bring?
In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune is played upon the
syllables that make up the word "wandering," even as, in the poem
from which it is taken, there is every echo of the noise of waters
laughing in sunny brooks, or moaning in dumb hidden caverns. Yet
even here it would be vain to seek for reason why each particular sound
of every line should be itself and no other. For melody holds no
absolute dominion over either verse or prose; its laws, never to be
disregarded, prohibit rather than prescribe. Beyond the simple
ordinances that determine the place of the rhyme in verse, and the
average number of syllables, or rhythmical beats, that occur in the line,
where shall laws be found to regulate the sequence of consonants and
vowels from syllable to syllable? Those few artificial restrictions,
which verse invents for itself, once agreed on, a necessary and perilous
license makes up the rest of the code. Literature can never conform to
the dictates of pure euphony, while grammar, which has been shaped
not in the interests of prosody, but for the service of thought, bars the
way with its clumsy inalterable polysyllables and the monotonous

sing-song of its inflexions. On the other hand, among a hundred ways
of saying a thing, there are more than ninety that a care for euphony
may reasonably forbid. All who have consciously practised the art of
writing know what endless and painful vigilance is needed for the
avoidance of the unfit or untuneful phrase, how the meaning must be
tossed from expression to expression, mutilated and deceived, ere it can
find rest in words. The stupid accidental recurrence of a single broad
vowel; the cumbrous repetition of a particle; the emphatic phrase for
which no emphatic place can be found without disorganising the
structure of the period; the pert intrusion on a solemn thought of a
flight of short syllables, twittering like a flock of sparrows; or that
vicious trick of sentences whereby each, unmindful of its position and
duties, tends to imitate the deformities of its predecessor;--these are a
select few of the difficulties that the nature of language and of man
conspire to put upon the writer. He is well served by his mind and ear if
he can win past all such traps and ambuscades, robbed of only a little of
his treasure, indemnified by the careless generosity of his spoilers, and
still singing.
Besides