To illustrate this doctrine examples being necessary, I shall begin with those where the word first introduced does not imply a relation.
---- Nor Eve to iterate Her former trespass fear’d.
---- Hunger and thirst at once, Powerful persuaders, quicken’d at the scent Of that alluring fruit, urg’d me so keen.
Moon, that now meet’st the orient sun, now fli’st With the fix’d stars, fix’d in their orb that flies, And ye five other wand’ring fires that move In mystic dance not without song, resound His praise.
In the following examples, where the word first introduced imports a relation, the disjunction will be found more violent.
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our wo, With loss of Eden, till one greater man Restore us, and regain the blessful seat, Sing heav’nly muse.
---- Upon the firm opacous globe Of this round world, whose first convex divides The luminous inferior orbs, inclos’d From chaos and th’ inroad of darkness old Satan alighted walks.
---- On a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, Th’ infernal doors.
---- Wherein remain’d, For what could else? to our almighty foe Clear victory, to our part loss and rout.
----Forth rush’d with whirlwind sound The chariot of paternal Deity.
Language would have no great power, were it confined to the natural order of ideas. A thousand beauties may be compassed by inversion, that must be relinquished in a natural arrangement. I shall soon have an opportunity to make this evident. In the mean time, it ought not to escape observation, that the mind of man is happily so constituted as to relish inversion, though in one respect unnatural; and to relish it so much, as in many cases to admit a violent disjunction of words that by the sense are intimately connected. I scarce can say that inversion has any limits; though I may venture to pronounce, that the disjunction of articles, conjunctions, or prepositions, from the words to which they belong, never has a good effect. The following example with relation to a preposition, is perhaps as tolerable as any of the kind.
He would neither separate _from_, nor act against them.
I give notice to the reader, that I am now ready to enter upon the rules of arrangement; beginning with a natural style, and proceeding gradually to what is the most inverted. And in the arrangement of a period, as well as in a right choice of words, the first and great object being perspicuity, it is above laid down as a rule, That perspicuity ought not to be sacrificed to any other beauty whatever. Ambiguities occasioned by a wrong arrangement are of two sorts; one where the arrangement leads to a wrong sense, and one where the sense is left doubtful. The first being the more culpable, shall take the lead, beginning with examples of words put in a wrong place.