encumbrance. By a slight stress laid on the difference of usage
the unshapeliness may be done away with, and a new grace found
where none was sought. Addison and Landor accuse Milton, with
reason, of too great a fondness for the pun, yet surely there is
something to please the mind, as well as the ear, in the
description of the heavenly judgment,


That brought into this world a world of woe.


Where words are not fitted with a single hard definition, rigidly
observed, all repetition is a kind of delicate punning, bringing
slight differences of application into clear relief. The practice
has its dangers for the weak-minded lover of ornament, yet even so
it may be preferable to the flat stupidity of one identical
intention for a word or phrase in twenty several contexts. For the
law of incessant change is not so much a counsel of perfection to
be held up before the apprentice, as a fundamental condition of all
writing whatsoever; if the change be not ordered by art it will
order itself in default of art. The same statement can never be
repeated even in the same form of words, and it is not the old
question that is propounded at the third time of asking.
Repetition, that is to say, is the strongest generator of emphasis
known to language. Take the exquisite repetitions in these few
lines:-


Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;