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AMERICAN HUMOUR AND WIT.

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worse, a moralist. In his new volume, Heartease and Rue, there is the following on a dinner-speech :-

'Tis a time for gay fancies, as fleeting and vain

As the whisper of foam-beads on fresh-poured champagne,
Since dinners, perhaps, were not strictly designed
For manoeuvering the heavy dragoons of the mind.
When I hear your set speeches that start with a pop,
Then wander and maunder, too feeble to stop,
With a vague apprehension from popular rumour
There used to be something by mortals called humour,
Beginning again when you thought they were done,
Respectable, sensible, weighing a ton,

And as near to the present occasions of men
As a Fast-Day discourse of the year eighteen-ten;
I-well, I sit still, and my sentiments smother,
For am not I also a bore and a brother?

The denunciation and satire is relieved by the two last lines where he includes himself. (See Professor Nichol's review of the American Wits and Humorists, and his criticism of Emerson and Lowell in particular.)

MELODY.

1. The Melody or Music of Language involves both the Voice and the Ear.

What is hard to pronounce is not only disagreeable as a vocal effort, but also painful to listen to.

2. Of the letters of the Alphabet, the abrupt consonants are the most difficult to utter; the vowels, the easiest.

As in movements generally, so with the voice, a sudden jerk or stoppage is painful. The most jerky of all the letters are the sharp mutes-p, t, k. Next are their aspirated forms--f, th (thin), h. The corresponding flat mutes areb, v; d, th (thy); g: these are still easier, as allowing continuance of the voice; the sudden check is absent. Thus, above is easier than put, puff; gather than cut, heath.

The liquids, l, m, n, ng, r, and the sibilants, s, sh, z, zh, are all continuous sounds, approaching in this respect to the vowels; while w and y are a kind of consonant vowels. There is no abruptness in rain, loom, sing, shame, leisure. The Greek and Roman languages (the Greek more) showed a preference for the flat mutes, the liquids and the sibilants; and, for the most part, softened the sharp mutes, especially p, t, k, by combination with the more flowing letters, as clepsydra, prurient.

3. Words being made up of alternate vowels and consonants, either singly, or in combinations, the more abrupt consonants are most easily pronounced when single, and when alternating with long vowels.. They then favour rapidity of movement.

The words picket, capital, alternate sharp mutes and short vowels; the presence of one or more long vowels gives greater ease to the voice, as in tapioca, tape, peat.

ARRANGEMENT OF LETTERS AND SYLLABLES.

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The un-abrupt consonants-flat mutes, liquids and sibilants--are easiest with long vowels.

Compare lame with lemon, rouse with russet. So azure, fire.

4. As regards both individual words and successions. of words, the easiest arrangement, generally speaking, is to alternate a single consonant and a single vowel: -as, recitability, inimical, a lazy boy, a good analysis, a palinode.

The more complex arrangements arise by accumulation of Consonants and Vowels.

(1) Clash and Cumulation of Consonants. This occurs in three forms:

(a) The union of sharp mutes with liquids and sibilants : as trifle, first, risk, proclaim.

This contributes to ease of pronunciation. The abruptness of the sharp mutes disappears in the fusion with a continuing sound.

Even this form of coalescence rather adds to the difficulty of pronouncing short vowels: pat is easier than prat. On the other hand, with long vowels, the arrangement gives birth to our most agreeable combinations: prayer, climb, break, flower.

(b) The union of two sharp inutes: as rupture. This makes pronunciation difficult. Still worse is the combination of the corresponding pair of sharp and flat mutes: as up by.

Even an intervening vowel, if short, does not make this vocal effort easy, as may be seen in pab, reg, tod. It takes either a long vowel, or union with a liquid or sibilant, to overcome the pain of the exertion.

The farther cumulation is carried, the greater the effort in pronouncing; qualified only by the fusion with the continuous consonants. The name Aitkman is pronounceable with great difficulty. Volkmann is easier. Swift's Brobdignagian is purposely made hard to pronounce. Triple combinations in general are necessarily trying to the voice: scratched, strengthened, twelfthly, pabst, conchs, bankrupt.

Similarly, a series of polysyllables is usually objectionable it can hardly be melodious in the unforced pronouncing of prose, because the proportion of unaccented syllables is too high to be easy. In ordinary cases, the rule for melody is to alternate long and short words.

Keats has this instance: "Thou seem'dst my sister".

(c) A syllable break, and the pause between two words, are valuable in lightening the vocal effort. In this way, even four consonants may come together: priesteraft triumphant is pronounceable by taking advantage of the syllable and word pauses.

When the same consonant ends one word and begins another, the effect is harsh: keep prople, come more, brief fate, hear right, dress sins.

The effort is easier according as the two differ: brief petition, cut dead, let these, comes(z) soft, marine stores.

A liquid and a mute, or two different liquids, are pronounced without difficulty; being next in point of ease to the alternation of vowel and consonant.*

(2) Clash and cumulation of vowels. The disagreeable effect thus produced is known as hiatus; to avoid it between words, the elision of the first vowel was practised in Latin

verse.

Whether inside a word, or between one word and another, the clash of vowels is disagreeable. The worst case is the concurrence of the same vowel: as co-operate,

* The importance for purposes of Melody of avoiding the cumulation of consonants may be enforced by the practice of Milton, as shown in the following quotation from Professor Masson:

"Milton evidently made a study of that quality of style which Bentham called 'pronunciability'. His fine ear not only taught him to seek for musical effects and cadences at large, but also to be fastidious as to syllables, and to avoid harsh or difficult conjunctions of consonants, except when there might be a musical reason for harshness or difficulty. In the management of the letter s, the frequency of which in English is one of the faults of the speech, he will be found, I believe, most careful and skilful. More rarely, I think, than in Shakespeare will one word ending in s be found followed immediately in Milton by another word beginning with the same letter; or, if he does occasionally pen such a phrase as 'Moab's sons,' it will be difficult to find in him, I believe, such a harsher example as earth's substance, of which many writers would think nothing. The same delicacy of ear is even more apparent in his management of the sh sound. He has it often, of course; but it may be noted that he rejects it in his verse when he can. He writes Basan for Bashan (P. L., I. 398), Sittim for Shittim (P. L., I. 413), Siloh for Shiloh (S. A., 1674), Asdod for Ashdod (S. A., 981), &c. Still more, however, does he seem to have been wary of the compound sound ch as in church. Of his sensitiveness to this sound in excess there is a curious proof in his prose pamphlet entitled An Apology against a Pamphlet called a Modest Confutation, &c., where, having occasion to quote these lines from one of the Satires of his opponent, Bishop Hall,

"Teach each hollow grove to sound his love,
Wearying echo with one changeless word,'

he adds, ironically, and so he well might, and all his auditory besides, with his teach each!' There can be little doubt, I think, that it was to avoid this teach each that he took the liberty of Miltonizing the good old English word vouchsafe into voutsafe" (Masson's Milton, Vol. I., p. liv.).

Yet Milton permits himself to use the following remarkable succession of sibilants:Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.

-(Par. Lost, VIII. 550.)

CONDITION OF VARIETY.

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you unite, potato only, blow over, Maria Ann. The difficulty is mitigated according as the vowels differ, but is never quite removed. Examples: poet, bowels, idea, hiatus, create, re-assume, co-equal, lively oracles, pity us. Compare my idea also of it, with my notion at any rate.

In the clash of vowels, it is better that one should be short and the other long, or one emphatic and the other not as go on, the ear. When the precedes an unemphatic syllable (beginning with a vowel), we are obliged to make it emphatic, the endeavour.

Long vowels out of accent need an effort to pronounce: contribute, Portugal, reprobate, widow. A pause or prolongation helps us out of the difficulty; and, accordingly, we feel disposed to pronounce such words with greater deliberation : as in holiday, palinode.

The melodious flow of speech is dependent upon the lengthening out of the pronunciation through the presence of long vowels and continuing consonants. Rapidity and ease can be given by the alternation of abrupt consonants and short vowels; but it is hardly possible to introduce musical tone without the means of delaying and prolonging the vocal strain; as may be seen from the examples at large. Our language cannot be continuously intoned like the Italian.

5. The sounds of speech are no exception to the demand for Variety.

Our alphabet may be said to contain 23 consonants, 14 vowels in accent, with the same out of accent, and diphthongs. The richness in vowels is unusual. The Latin language possesses only five vowels, while these are destitute of our variations of long and short. The first stanza of Gray's 'Elegy' nearly exhausts the copiousness of our vowel range, and is correspondingly agreeable to the ear.

So imperious is the demand for variety, that even the difficult and harsh combinations of letters may be brought in as an agreeable variety, after a succession of smooth and liquid sounds. Monotony in sweetness is the most painful of all.

The term Alliteration is employed to signify the commencing of successive words with the same letter or syllable. Unless when carried out on a set purpose, it offends the

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