THE QUESTION OF STYLE
I shall never forget the famous: Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit.… It was always cited to us as an example of onomatopœia, and my teacher had persuaded me that one might mistake it for the gallop of a horse.
One day, wishing to frighten my little sister, who had a great fear of horses, I came up behind her and cried, "Quadrupedante putrem," and so forth. Well, the little thing wasn't frightened!
Onomatopœia, like everything else pertaining to style, is used properly when it does not obtrude itself, when it helps us to form a mental picture without our being aware by what agency the author has attained his result. Take, for instance, one of the most extreme instances in modern writing of an attempt to fit sound to meaning—the libretti to Wagner's Ring. When you read the text quietly by yourself you feel that the whole thing has been overdone; the various tricks of alliteration
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