He himself knew better, but
there was no resisting the temptation of such a line as that. Small
words he says, in plain prosaic criticism, are generally "stiff and
languishing, but they may be beautiful to express melancholy."
The English language is a language of small words. It is, says Swift,
"overstocked with monosyllables." It cuts down all its words to the
shortest possible dimensions: a sort of half-Procrustes, which lops but
never stretches. In one of the most magnificent passages in Holy Writ,
that, namely, which describes the death of Sisera:--
"At her feet he bowed, he fell: at her feet he bowed, he fell,
he lay down: where he bowed, there he fell down dead."
There are twenty-two monosyllables to three of greater length, or rather
to the same dissyllable thrice repeated; and that too in common parlance
proncounced as a monosyllable. The passage in the Book of Ezekiel, which
Coleride is said to have considered the most sublime in the whole
Bible,--
"And He said unto me, son of man, can these bones live? And I
answered, O Lord God, though knowest,"--
contains seventeen monosyllables to three others.
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