But the
classification is a crass one, and the English language unfortunately
does not possess words to express the distinctions, while the ambiguous
associations of the word "prose" increase the difficulty of inventing
them. We do not even possess any equivalent of the French "prosateur,"
though I see no reason why "prosator" should not be used. Without
neologisms, and avoiding the ambiguous adjective "prosaic," and using
"poetic" to express "soulfulness" and not the handling of metres, we get
1. Poetic Verse-Artists. (Poets.)
2. Non-Poetic Verse-Artists. (Verse-Writers.)
3. Poetic Prose-Artists. (Prose Poets.)
4. Non-Poetic Prose-Artists. (Prose Writers.)
Keats is a verse poet, Pope a verse writer, Buskin a prose poet, and
Hallam a prose writer.
* * * * *
The two great writers of our day who have sinned most against the laws of
writing are Browning and Meredith, the one in verse, the other in prose.
I speak not merely of obscurities, to perpetrate which is in
every sense to stand in one's own light, but of sheer fatuities,
tweakings-of-the-nose to our reverend mother-tongue, as either might have
expressed it. But what I am most concerned to suggest here is that the
distinction between prose and poetry (using prose to mean artistically
wrought language) will not survive investigation.
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