This is a part of the sweet charm
of the classics. We are pleased with things in Horace which we should
not find especially enlivening in Mr. Tupper. Cowper, in one of his
letters, after turning a clever sentence, says, "There! if that had been
written in Latin seventeen centuries ago by Mr. Flaccus, you would have
thought it rather neat." How fully any particular rhythm gets possession
of us we can convince ourselves by our dissatisfaction with any
emendation made by a contemporary poet in his verses. Posterity may
think he has improved them, but we are jarred by any change in the old
tune. Even without any habitual association, we cannot help recognizing
a certain power over our fancy in mere words. In verse almost every ear
is caught with the sweetness of alliteration. I remember a line in
Thomson's "Castle of Indolence" which owes much of its fascination to
three _m's_, where he speaks of the Hebrid Isles
Far placed amid the melancholy main.
I remember a passage in Prichard's "Races of Man" which had for me all
the moving quality of a poem. It was something about the Arctic regions,
and I could never read it without the same thrill. Dr. Prichard was
certainly far from being an inspired or inspiring author, yet there was
something in those words, or in their collocation, that affected me as
only genius can. It was probably some dimly felt association, something
like that strange power there is in certain odors, which, in themselves
the most evanescent and impalpable of all impressions on the senses,
have yet a wondrous magic in recalling, and making present to us, some
forgotten experience.
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