Conformity of Sense to Sound. In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.-COLERIDGE: trans. Schiller ARTICULATE IMITATION OF INARTICULATE SOUNDS. Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. On a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.-MILTON: Lycidas. Snatched two unhappy of my martial band, And dashed like dogs against the stony floor.-POPE: Hom. Odys. At dead of night, 'mid his orison, hears Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers, Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon. DYER: Ruins of Rome. What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce, With arms, and George, and Brunswick, crowd the verse, With drum, gun, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder? Then all your muse's softer art display: Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay, Lull with Amelia's liquid name the nine, And sweetly flow through all the royal line.-POPE: Sat. I. Remarkable examples are afforded by Dryden's Alexander's Feast, and The Bells of Edgar A. Poe. IMITATION OF TIME AND MOTION. When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecs sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the checkered shade.-MILTON: L'Allegro. Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone; The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. POPE: Hom. Odys. Which urged, and labored, and forced up with pain, DRYDEN: Lucretius. A needless Alexandrine ends the song, POPE: Essay on Criticism. Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. POPE: Essay on Criticism. Oft on a plat of rising ground I hear the far-off curfew sound, Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar.-MILTON: Il Penseroso. The well-known hexameters of Virgil, descriptive respectively of the galloping of horses over a resounding plain, and of the heavy blows in alternately hammering the metal on the anvil, afford good examples,-the dactylic, of rapidity, the spondaic, of slowness. Quadrupe- dante pu- | trem soni- | tu quatit | ungula | campum, Eneid, viii. 596. Illi in- ter se- se mag- na vi | brachia | tollunt.-Eneid, viii. 452. IMITATION OF DIFFICULTY AND EASE. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line, too, labors, and the words move slow, &c.-POPE: E88, on Criticism He through the thickest of the throng gan threke.-CHAUCER: Knight's Tale. And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year.-POPE: Sat. Frag. Part huge of bulk, Wallowing, unwieldy, enormous in their gait, Tempest the ocean.-MILTON: Paradise Lost, vii. He came, and with him Eve, more loath, though first So he with difficulty and labor hard MILTON: Paradise Lost, x. Moved on, with difficulty and labor he.-MILTON: Pa adise Lost, ii. A corporation aggregate of many is invisible, immortal, and vests only in intendment and consideration of the law. They cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, for they have no souls, neither can they appear in person, but by attorney.-Coke's Reports, vol. x. p. 32. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. EURIPIDES: Fragments. For those whom God to ruin has designed, DRYDEN: Hind and Panther. Men are but children of a larger growth; Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, DRYDEN: All for Love, iv. I. Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed, More worship the rising than the setting sun. POMPEY TO SYLLA: Plutarch's Lives. Incidis in Scillam cupiens vitare Charybdim. PHILIPPE GAULTIER: Alexandreia, History is philosophy teaching by example. DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS. Consistency a Jewel. In the search for the source of familiar quotations, none appears to have so completely baffled patient seekers as the phrase "Consistency is a jewel." Several years ago a perplexed scholar offered a handsome reward for the discovery of its origin. Not till quite recently, however, has the claim been set up that the original was found in the "Ballad of Jolly Robyn Roughhead," which is preserved in "Murtagh's Collection of Ancient English and Scottish Ballads." The stanza in which it occurs is the following: Tush, tush, my lassie, such thoughts resign, Comparisons are cruel; Fine pictures suit in frames as fine, Consistency's a jewel: For thee and me coarse clothes are best, Rude folks in homely raiment drest- Cleanliness next to Godliness. The origin of the proverb, "Cleanliness is next to godliness," has been the subject of extended investigation. Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" attributes the phrase to Rev. John Wesley; but as this prominent Methodist clergyman uses this sentence in his sermons as a quotation from some other work, it has been suggested that further search is requisite. Rev. Dr. A. S. Bettelheimer, of Richmond, Va., asserts that he has discovered this maxim in an abstract of religious principles contained in an old commentary on the Book of Isaiah. Thus the practical doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness, vigorousness, guiltlessness, abstemiousness and cleanliness. And cleanliness is next to godliness, which is next to holiness. He's a brick. An Eastern prince visited the ruler of a neighboring country, and after viewing various objects worthy of attention, asked to see the fortifications. He was shown the troops with this remark-"These are my fortifications; every man is a brick." When you are at Rome do as the Romans do. This proverb has been traced to a saying of St. Ambrose. St. Augustine mentions in one of his letters (Ep. lxxxvj ad Casulan.) that when his mother was living with him at Milan, she was much scandalized because Saturday was kept there as a festival; whilst at Rome, where she had resided a long time, it was kept as a fast. To ease her mind he consulted the bishop on this question, who told him he could give him no better advice in the case than to do as he himself did. when I go to Rome," said Ambrose, "I fast on the Saturday, as they do at Rome; when I am here, I do not fast." With this answer, he says that "he satisfied his mother, and ever after looked upon it as an oracle sent from heaven." A Nation of Shopkeepers. "For To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations. On May 31, 1817, Napoleon is reported to have said to Barry O'Meara, .... You were greatly offended with me for having called you a nation of shopkeepers. Had I meant by this that you were a nation of cowards, you would have had reason to be displeased. . . . . I meant that you were a nation of merchants, and that all your great riches arose from commerce. .... Moreover, no man of sense ought to be ashamed of being called a shopkeeper.-Voice from St. Helena. He's only a pauper whom nobody owns, are from the Pauper's Drive, by Thomas Noel. Taking time by the forelock. Spenser says, Sonnet lxx.: Go to my love, where she is careless laid, Unless she do him by the forelock take. |