Page:The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858) Holmes.djvu/121

Rh once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a pickerel takes the bait, and earned it off with him to his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his leisure.]

Here is another remark made for his especial benefit.—There is a natural tendency in many persons to run their adjectives together in triads, as I have heard them called,—thus: He was honorable, courteous, and brave; she was graceful, pleasing, and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in the "Rambler" into three distinct essays. Many of our writers show the same tendency,—my friend, the Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble imitation of Johnson,—some that it is for the sake of the stately sound only. I don't think they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to present a thought or image with the three dimensions that belong to every solid,—an unconscious handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind this: the more we observe and study, the wider we find the range of the automatic and instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the limits of the self-determining conscious movement.

I have often seen piano-forte players and