The popular instinct
has long ago seen that the vital thing is the _matter_--that it is
profanity to call that "poetry" which is only verse; it remains to be
recognised that even the distinction of form rests only on the
non-recognition of the rhythm of "prose,"--a rhythm that is not metre in
so far as metre has the sense of regular measure, but may for all that
have laws of its own, which await the discoverer and the systematiser.
The affinity of prose-rhythms is, I have hinted, with the higher
developments of music, which, compared with the simple tunes of the
street, are as apparently lawless and unlicensed as is prose compared to
verse. And as it is not poets who follow laws, but precede them--as
trochee and iambic, alcaic and hexameter, are the inventions of
grammarians following on the trail of genius--so it behoves the Aristotle
who would discover the laws of the rhythm of prose to study the masters
of the art, masters by instinct and a faultless ear and the grace of God,
and endeavour by patient induction to wrest from their sentences the
secrets of their harmonies. Who will write the prosody of prose?
It is sad to have to declare that the bulk of contemporary writers lie
outside all these classifications.
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