But this extension of the general principle of economy--this
further condition to effective composition, that the sensitiveness of
the faculties must be continuously husbanded--includes much more than
has been yet hinted. It implies not only that certain arrangements and
certain juxtapositions of connected ideas are best; but that some modes
of dividing and presenting a subject will be more striking than others;
and that, too, irrespective of its logical cohesion. It shows why we
must progress from the less interesting to the more interesting; and
why not only the composition as a whole, but each of its successive
portions, should tend towards a climax. At the same time, it forbids
long continuity of the same kind of thought, or repeated production of
like effects. It warns us against the error committed both by Pope in
his poems and by Bacon in his essays--the error, namely, of constantly
employing forcible forms of expression: and it points out that as
the easiest posture by and by becomes fatiguing, and is with pleasure
exchanged for one less easy, so, the most perfectly-constructed
sentences will soon weary, and relief will be given by using those of an
inferior kind.

Sec. 65. Further, we may infer from it not only that we should avoid
generally combining our words in one manner, however good, or working
out our figures and illustrations in one way, however telling; but
that we should avoid anything like uniform adherence, even to the wider
conditions of effect. We should not make every section of our subject
progress in interest; we should not always rise to a climax. As we saw
that, in single sentences, it is but rarely allowable to fulfill all the
conditions to strength; so, in the larger sections of a composition
we must not often conform entirely to the law indicated. We must
subordinate the component effect to the total effect.

Sec. 66. In deciding how practically to carry out the principles of
artistic composition, we may derive help by bearing in mind a fact
already pointed out--the fitness of certain verbal arrangements
for certain kinds of thought. That constant variety in the mode of
presenting ideas which the theory demands, will in a great degree result
from a skilful adaptation of the form to the matter. We saw how the
direct or inverted sentence is spontaneously used by excited people;
and how their language is also characterized by figures of speech and by
extreme brevity. Hence these may with adv