Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE
Here, then, we have a fresh pattern — a pattern, to
speak grossly, of letters — which makes the fourth
preoccupation of the prose writer, and the fifth of
the versifier. At times it is very delicate and hard
to perceive, and then perhaps most excellent and
winning (I say perhaps) ; but at times again the
elements of this literal melody stand more boldly
forward and usurp the ear. It becomes, therefore,
somewhat a matter of conscience to select examples ;
and as I cannot very well ask the reader to help me,
I shall do the next best by giving him the reason or
the history of each selection. The two first, one in
prose, one in verse, I chose without previous analysis,
simply as engaging passages that had long re-echoed
in my ear.
' I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue,
unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out
and sees her adversary, but sHnks out of the race
where that immortal garland is to be run for, not
without dust and heat.'^ Down to 'virtue,' the
current s and n 'are both announced and repeated
unobtrusively, and by way of a grace-note that
almost inseparable group pvf is given entire.^ The
next phrase is a period of repose, almost ugly in
itself, both s and r still audible, and b given as the
last fulfilment of pvf. In the next four phrases,
from 'that never' down to 'run for,' the mask is
1 Milton.
2 As PVF will continue to haunt us through our English examples,
take, by way of comparison, this Latin verse, of which it forms a chief
adornment, and do not hold me answerable for the all too Roman freedom
of the sense : ' Hanc volo, quae facilis, quae palliolata vagatur. '