t among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers that were
marshalled round Neerwinden, under all the standards of Western Europe,
the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf, who urged forward
the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the
slow retreat of England."

The effect of Climax is very marked in the drama. Every speech, every
scene, every act, should have its progressive sequence. Nothing can be
more injudicious than a trivial phrase following an energetic phrase, a
feeble thought succeeding a burst of passion, or even a passionate
thought succeeding one more passionate. Yet this error is frequently
committed.

In the drama all laws of Style are more imperious than in fiction or
prose of any kind, because the art is more intense. But Climax is
demanded in every species of composition, for it springs from a
psychological necessity. It is pressed upon, however, by the law of
Variety in a way to make it far from safe to be too rigidly followed.
It easily degenerates into monotony.

V. THE LAW OF VARIETY.

Some one, after detailing an elaborate recipe for a salad, wound up the
enumeration of ingredients and quantities with the advice to "open the
window and throw it all away." This advice might be applied to the
foregoing enumeration of the laws of Style, unless these were
supplemented by the important law of Variety. A style which rigidly
interpreted the precepts of economy, simplicity, sequence, and climax,
which rejected all superfluous words and redundant ornaments, adopted
the easiest and most logical arrangement, and closed every sentence and
every paragraph with a climax, might be a very perfect bit of mosaic,
but would want the glow and movement of a living mind. Monotony would
settle on it like a paralysing frost. A series of sentences in which
every phrase was a distinct thought, would no more serve as pabulum for
the mind, than portable soup freed from all the fibrous tissues of meat
and vegetable would serve as food for the body. Animals perish from
hunger in the presence of pure albumen; and minds would lapse into
idiocy in the presence of unadulterated thought. But without invoking
extreme cases, let us simply remember the psychological fact that it is
as easy for sentences to be too compact as for food to be too
concentrated; and that many a happy negligence, which to microscopic
criticism may appear defective, will be the means of giving clearness
and grace to a