Languages & literature > Abridgement of lectures on rhetoric

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STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES.
blended with long and fwelling ones, to render difcourfe
fprightly as well, as magnificent. \
We now proceed to treat of a higher fpecies of har¬
mony ; the found adapted to the fenfe. Of this we
, may remark two degrees. Firft the current of found
fuited to the tenor of a difcourfe. Next a peculiar re-
femblance effected between feme objedt and the founds,
that are employed in deferibing it. \
Sounds have; in many refpedts an intimate corref-
pondence with our ideas ; partly natural, partly pro¬
duced by artificial aflbeiations. Hence any one modu¬
lation of found, continued, ftamps on ftyle a certain
character and expreffion. Sentences, conftrudted with
Ciceronian fulnefs, excite an idea of what is important,
magnificent, and fedate. But they fuit no violent paf-
fion, no eager reafoning, no familiar addrefs. Thefe
require meafures hrifker, eafier, and often more abrupt.
Tt were as abfurd to write a panegyric and an invedfive
in a ftyle of the fame cadence, as to fet the words of a
tender love fong to the tune of a warlike march.
Befide the general correfpondence of the current of
found with the current of thought a more particular ex¬
preffion of certain objedb by refembimg founds may be
attempted. In poetry this refemblance is chiefly to be
fought. It obtains fometimes indeed in prefe compo.
lition ; but there in an inferior degree.