rule and say the word, but when the thing repeats itself they will seldom allow the word to follow suit.  A kind of interdict, not removed until the memory of the first occurrence has faded, lies on a once used word.  The causes of this anxiety for a varied expression are manifold.  Where there is merely a column to fill, poverty of thought drives the hackney author into an illicit fulness, until the trick of verbiage passes from his practice into his creed, and makes him the dupe of his own puppets.  A commonplace book, a dictionary of synonyms, and another of phrase and fable equip him for his task; if he be called upon to marshal his ideas on the question whether oysters breed typhoid, he will acquit himself voluminously, with only one allusion (it is a point of pride) to the oyster by name.  He will compare the succulent bivalve to Pandora’s box, and lament that it should harbour one of the direst of ills that flesh is heir to.  He will find a paradox and an epigram in the notion that the darling of Apicius should suffer neglect under the frowns of Æsculapius.  Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance their allotted round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance masquerades in the garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient epilogue of chastened hope.  When all is said, nothing is said; and Montaigne’s Que sçais-je, besides being briefer and wittier, was infinitely more informing.

But we dwell too long with disease; the writer nourished on thought, whose nerves are braced and his loins girt to struggle with a real meaning, is not subject to these tympanies.  He feels no idolatrous dread of repetition when the theme requires, it, and is urged by no necessity of concealing real identity under a show of change.  Nevertheless he, too, is hedged about by conditions that compel him, now and again, to resort to what seems a synonym.  The chief of these is the indispensable law of euphony, which governs the sequence not only of words, but also of phrases.  In proportion as a phrase is memorable, the words that compose it become mutually adhesive, losing for a time something of their individual scope, bringing with them, if they be torn away too quickly, some cumbrous fragments of their recent association.  That he may avoid this, a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, and extorts, if he be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of his encumbrance.  By a slight stress laid on the difference of usage the unshapeliness may be done away with, and a new grace found where none was sought.  Addison and Landor accuse Milton, with reason, of too great a fondness for the pun, yet surely there is something to please the mind, as well as the ear, in the description of the heavenly judgment,

That brought into this world a world of woe.