many beauties that are totally excluded in a natural arrangement of words. From these premisses it clearly follows, that inversion ought not to be indulged, unless in order to reach some beauty superior to that of a natural style. It may with great certainty be pronounced, that every inversion which is not governed by this rule, will appear harsh and strained, and be disrelished by every one of taste. Hence the beauty of inversion when happily conducted; the beauty, not of an end, but of means, as furnishing opportunity for numberless ornaments that find no place in a natural style. Hence the force, the elevation, the harmony, the cadence, of some compositions. Hence the manifold beauties of the Greek and Roman tongues, of which living languages afford but faint imitations. SECT. III. _Beauty of language from a resemblance betwixt sound and signification._ The resemblance betwixt the sound and signification of certain words, is a beauty, which has escaped no critical writer, and yet is not handled with accuracy by any of them. They have probably been erroneously of opinion, that a beauty so obvious in the feeling, requires no explanation in the understanding. In order to supply this defect, I shall give examples of the various resemblances betwixt sound and signification; and at the same time shall endeavour to explain why such resemblances are beautiful. I begin with examples where the resemblance betwixt the sound and signification is the most entire; proceeding to others, where the resemblance is less and less so. There being frequently a strong resemblance betwixt different sounds, it will not be surprising to find a natural sound imitated by one that is articulate. Thus the sound of a bow-string is imitated by the words that express it. ---- The string let fly, _Twang’d short and sharp_, like the shrill swallow’s cry. _Odyssey_ xxi. 449. The sound of felling trees in a wood: Loud sounds the ax, redoubling strokes on strokes; On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks Headlong. Deep-echoing groan the thickets brown, Then _rustling_, _crackling_, _crashing_, thunder down. _Iliad_, xxiii. 144. But when loud surges lash the sounding shore The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar! _Pope’s Essay on Criticism, 369._ No person can be at a loss about the cause of this beauty. It is obviously that of imitation.