Are we not justified, then, in taking the
logical step further, and saying that prose, which strips itself of the
last rags of adventitious ornament, and which tempts the amateur most of
all, is the highest of all literary forms, the most difficult of all to
handle triumphantly? May we not compare the music of it--that music which
we get in Ruskin and in Pater--to the larger rhythms to which the savage
drum-beat has developed? Rhythm is undoubtedly an instinct, but
civilisation brings complexity. From the tom-tom to the tune, from the
tune to the symphony. In the vaster reaches and sweeps of the rhythm of
prose there is a massive music as of Wagnerian orchestras. Anybody can
enjoy the castanet-play of rhymes; half your popular proverbs clash at
the ends; "the jigging of our rhyming mother-wits" is on everybody's
lips. But for the blank verse of "Paradise Lost" there is only "audience
fit, though few"; and as for the music of prose, so little is it
understood that critics vaguely aware of it had to invent the term "prose
poet" when they found the stress of passion and imagination effervescing
into resonant utterance. On the other hand, there are those who do not
acknowledge Pope as a poet. The essence of the long-standing quarrel is a
confusion.
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