The Art of Writing | Page 6

verse; so that not only is there a greater interval of continuous sound
between the pauses, but, for that very reason, word is linked more
readily to word by a more summary enunciation. Still, the phrase is the
strict analogue of the group, and successive phrases, like successive
groups, must differ openly in length and rhythm. The rule of scansion
in verse is to suggest no measure but the one in hand; in prose, to
suggest no measure at all. Prose must be rhythmical, and it may be as
much so as you will; but it must not be metrical. It may be anything,
but it must not be verse. A single heroic line may very well pass and

not disturb the somewhat larger stride of the prose style; but one
following another will produce an instant impression of poverty,
flatness, and disenchantment. The same lines delivered with the
measured utterance of verse would perhaps seem rich in variety. By the
more summary enunciation proper to prose, as to a more distant vision,
these niceties of difference are lost. A whole verse is uttered as one
phrase; and the ear is soon wearied by a succession of groups identical
in length. The prose writer, in fact, since he is allowed to be so much
less harmonious, is condemned to a perpetually fresh variety of
movement on a larger scale, and must never disappoint the ear by the
trot of an accepted metre. And this obligation is the third orange with
which he has to juggle, the third quality which the prose writer must
work into his pattern of words. It may be thought perhaps that this is a
quality of ease rather than a fresh difficulty; but such is the inherently
rhythmical strain of the English language, that the bad writer--and must
I take for example that admired friend of my boyhood, Captain
Reid?--the inexperienced writer, as Dickens in his earlier attempts to be
impressive, and the jaded writer, as any one may see for himself, all
tend to fall at once into the production of bad blank verse. And here it
may be pertinently asked, Why bad? And I suppose it might be enough
to answer that no man ever made good verse by accident, and that no
verse can ever sound otherwise than trivial when uttered with the
delivery of prose. But we can go beyond such answers. The weak side
of verse is the regularity of the beat, which in itself is decidedly less
impressive than the movement of the nobler prose; and it is just into
this weak side, and this alone, that our careless writer falls. A peculiar
density and mass, consequent on the nearness of the pauses, is one of
the chief good qualities of verse; but this our accidental versifier, still
following after the swift gait and large gestures of prose, does not so
much as aspire to imitate. Lastly, since he remains unconscious that he
is making verse at all, it can never occur to him to extract those effects
of counterpoint and opposition which I have referred to as the final
grace and justification of verse, and, I may add, of blank verse in
particular.
4. Contents of the Phrase.--Here is a great deal of talk about
rhythm--and naturally; for in our canorous language rhythm is always

at the door. But it must not be forgotten that in some languages this
element is almost, if not quite, extinct, and that in our own it is
probably decaying. The even speech of many educated Americans
sounds the note of danger. I should see it go with something as bitter as
despair, but I should not be desperate. As in verse no element, not even
rhythm, is necessary, so, in prose also, other sorts of beauty will arise
and take the place and play the part of those that we outlive. The beauty
of the expected beat in verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and more
lawless melody, patent as they are to English hearing, are already silent
in the ears of our next neighbours; for in France the oratorical accent
and the pattern of the web have almost or altogether succeeded to their
places; and the French prose writer would be astounded at the labours
of his brother across the Channel, and how a good quarter of his toil,
above all invita Minerva, is to avoid writing verse. So wonderfully far
apart have races wandered in spirit, and so hard it is to understand the
literature next door!
Yet French prose is distinctly better than English; and French verse,
above all while Hugo lives, it will not do to place upon one side. What
is more to our purpose, a phrase or a verse in French is easily
distinguishable as comely or