Nothing so much degrades the tone of a style as an effeminate and
hurried movement in the language, such as is produced by pyrrhics and
trochees and dichorees falling in time together into a regular dance
measure. Such abuse of rhythm is sure to savour of coxcombry and petty
affectation, and grows tiresome in the highest degree by a monotonous
sameness of tone.
2
But its worst effect is that, as those who listen to a ballad have their
attention distracted from its subject and can think of nothing but the
tune, so an over-rhythmical passage does not affect the hearer by the
meaning of its words, but merely by their cadence, so that sometimes,
knowing where the pause must come, they beat time with the speaker,
striking the expected close like dancers before the stop is reached.
Equally undignified is the splitting up of a sentence into a number of
little words and short syllables crowded too closely together and forced
into cohesion,--hammered, as it were, successively together,--after the
manner of mortice and tenon.[1]
[Footnote 1: I must refer to Weiske's Note, which I have followed,
for the probable interpretation of this extraordinary passage.]