of phrase and fable equip him for his task; if he be called upon to
marshal his ideas on the question whether oysters breed typhoid, he
will acquit himself voluminously, with only one allusion (it is a
point of pride) to the oyster by name. He will compare the
succulent bivalve to Pandora's box, and lament that it should
harbour one of the direst of ills that flesh is heir to. He will
find a paradox and an epigram in the notion that the darling of
Apicius should suffer neglect under the frowns of AEsculapius.
Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance their
allotted round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance
masquerades in the garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her
ancient epilogue of chastened hope. When all is said, nothing is
said; and Montaigne's Que scais-je, besides being briefer and
wittier, was infinitely more informing.

But we dwell too long with disease; the writer nourished on
thought, whose nerves are braced and his loins girt to struggle
with a real meaning, is not subject to these tympanies. He feels
no idolatrous dread of repetition when the theme requires, it, and
is urged by no necessity of concealing real identity under a show
of change. Nevertheless he, too, is hedged about by conditions
that compel him, now and again, to resort to what seems a synonym.
The chief of these is the indispensable law of euphony, which
governs the sequence not only of words, but also of phrases. In
proportion as a phrase is memorable, the words that compose it
become mutually adhesive, losing for a time something of their
individual scope, bringing with them, if they be torn away too
quickly, some cumbrous fragments of their recent association. That
he may avoid this, a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts,
and extorts, if he be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of his