For another illustration, in one of the standard manuals of versification it is pointed out that the surd mutes (p, k, t) “help to convey the idea of littleness, delicacy, and sprightliness,” and that the short vowel i is fitted to express “joy, gaiety, triviality, rapid movement, and physical littleness.” To illustrate both assertions, Mercutio’s account of Queen Mab is cited: She comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone, ... Drawn by a team of little atomies. Here the effect is perhaps easier to recognize, and even an obtuse reader thinks he follows the reasoning; but compare Browning’s lines: The wroth sea’s waves are edged With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate. The “bitten lip” has as many surd mutes and short i’s as the “little atomies”; but it fails to express sprightliness, gaiety, or triviality.... The fact is, of course, that all this analysis of sounds proceeds upon a false assumption. When you say Titan you mean something big, and when you say tittle you mean something small; but it is not the sound of either word that means either bigness or littleness, it is the sense. If you put together a great many similar consonants in one sentence, they will attract special attention to the words in which they occur, and the significance of those words, whatever it may be, is thereby intensified; but whether the words are “a team of little atomies” or “a triumphant terrible Titan,” it is not the sound of the consonants that makes the significance.[37] Rhythm is discussed in the same order, first[38] by classifying feet as iambs, trochees, dactyls, etc., then[39] by analyzing their effects singly and in combination. “A simple rhythm or foot has not less than two syllables nor more than three.”[40] This is commonly accepted for meter; but does it hold for the rhythms of prose? Moreover that the foot is the rhythmical unit, whether in Greek or in other languages, is oftener assumed than proved. Rhythmical effects, in English at least, seem to be not so much of feet as of measures, whether verses or clauses. Unless the foot is actually a unit, for the composer or for the hearer—and this is at least doubtful—such analysis as that of a noble passage from the funeral speech in the second book of Thucydides[41] lays too much stress on the components—spondees, anapests, etc.—and not enough on the _compositio_, or pace of the sentence. By way of contrast to Thucydides, Plato, and Demosthenes, Dionysius pillories Hegesias of Magnesia.[42] Variety of rhythm[43] is discussed more generally, without instances, and as an introduction to rhythm in prose.