It is a grammarians' term, "prose," and
belongs not to the herd. They do not need it, and it would never have
come into M. Jourdain's head or out of his mouth, had he not taken a
tutor. And yet the delusion is common enough--even with those to whom
Moliere is Greek--that prose is anything which is not poetry. As well say
that poetry is anything which is not prose. Of the two branches of the
art of language, prose is the more difficult. This is not the opinion of
those who know nothing about it. They fancy a difficulty about rhymes and
metres. 'T is all the other way. Rhymes are the rudders of thought; they
steer the poet's bark. He cannot get to Heaven itself without striking
"seven," or mixing up his meaning with foreign "leaven." His shifts to
avoid these shifts are pathetic to a degree. He flounders about twixt
"given" and "levin," and has been known to snatch desperately at
"reaven." Of all fraudulent crafts commend me to the poet's. He is a
paragon of deceit and quackery, a jingling knave. 'T is a game of _bouts
rimes_, and he calls it "inspiration." No wonder Plato would have none of
him in his Republic, even though Plato's poets were guiltless of rhyme
and slaves only to metre. But the metre of verse, too, is a friend to
thought, and its enemy.
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