Here, you observe not only is there musical flow of single sentences, but one sentence remembers another and proportions itself thereto--if the last was long, this, is shorter or longer, and if one calls for a certain tune, the most calls for a different tune--and we have not only grace but variety. In this variety may be found an easy test of artistic prose. If you try to read two hundred lines of Chaucer's _Melibœus_ or his _Parson's Tale_ aloud, you are presently oppressed with a sense of bagpipishness in your own voice which becomes intolerable; but you can read Malory's _King Arthur_ aloud from beginning to end with a never-cloying sense of proportion and rhythmic flow. I wish I had time to demonstrate minutely how much of the relish of all fine prose is due to the arrangement of the sentences in such a way that consecutive sentences do not call for the same tune; for example, if one sentence is sharp antithesis--you know the well-marked speech tune of an antithesis, "do you mean _this_ book, or do you mean _that_ book?" you must be careful in the next sentence to vary the tune from that of the antithesis. In the prose I read you from Chaucer and from the old manuscript, a large part of the intolerableness is due to the fact that nearly every sentence involves the tune of an aphorism or proverb, and the iteration of the same pitch-successions in the voice presently becomes wearisome. This fault--of the succession of antithetic ideas so that the voice becomes weary of repeating the same contrariety of accents--I can illustrate very strikingly in a letter which I happen to remember of Queen Elizabeth, whom I have found to be a great sinner against good prose in this particular. Here is part of a letter from her to King Edward VI. concerning a portrait of herself which it seems the king had desired. (Italicised words represent antithetic accents.) "Like as the rich man that daily gathereth _riches_ to _riches_, and to _one_ bag of money layeth a great sort till it come to _infinite_; so methinks your majesty, not being sufficed with so many benefits and gentleness shewed to me afore this time, doth now increase them in _asking_ and _desiring_ where you may _bid_ and _command_, requiring a thing not worthy the desiring for _itself_, but _made_ worthy for your highness' _request_. My picture I mean; in which, if the _inward_ good mind toward your grace might as well be _declared_, as the _outward_ face and countenance shall be _seen_, I would not have _tarried_ the commandment but _prevented_ it, nor have been the _last_ to _grant_, but the _first_ to _offer_ it." And so on. You observe here into what a sing-song the voice must fall; if you abstract the words, and say over the tune, it is continually; tum-ty-ty tum-ty-ty, tum-ty-ty tum-ty-ty.