truth. And here we touch upon a very important matter.
The reason why in prose speech is loosened is that, untrammelled
by the lavis of metre, language is able with more exactitude to
imitate nature, though of course speech, even when “ loosened, ”
cannot, when actual sensible objects are to be depicted, compete
in any real degree with the plastic arts in accuracy of imitation,
for the simple reason that its media are not colours nor solids
but symbols-arbitrary symbols which can be made to indicate,
but never to reproduce, colours and solids. Accuracy of imitation
is the first requisite of prose. But the moment language
has to be governed by the laws of metre-the moment the conflict
begins between the claims of verbal music and the claims of
colour and form-then prosaic accuracy has to yield, sharpness
of outline, mere fidelity of imitation, such as is within the compass
of prose, have in some degree to be sacrificed. But, just
as with regard to the relations between poetry and music the
greatest master is he who borrows the most that can be borrowed
from music, and loses the least that can be lost from metre, so
with regard to the relations between poetry and prose the greatest
master is he who borrows the most that can be borrowed from
prose and loses the least that can be lost from verse. No doubt
this is what every poet tries to do by instinct; but some sacrifice
on either side there must be, and, with regard to poetry and
prose, modern poets at least might be divided into those who
make picturesqueness yield to verbal melody, and those
x ho make verbal melody yield to picturesqueness.
With one class of poets, fine as is perhaps the melody, it is made
subservient to outline or to colour; with the other class colour
and outline both yleld to metre. The chief a1m of the first class
ls to paint a picture; the chief aim of the second is to sing a song.
Weber, in driving through a beautiful country, could on y enjoy
its beauty by translating it into music. The same may be said
of some poets with regard to verbal melody. The supreme artist,
however, is lie whose pictorial and musical power are so inter fused
that each seems born of the other, as is the case with Sa pho,
Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and indeed most of the great (greek
poets. Among English poets (leaving the two supreme masters
undiscussed) Keats and Coleridge have certainly done this. The
colour seems born of the music and the music born of the
colour. In French poetry the same triumph has been achieved in
Victor Hugo's magnificent poem “ En marchant la nuit dans un
bois, " which, as a rendering through verbal music of the witchery
of nature, stands alone in the poetry of France. For there the
poet conquers that crowning difficulty we have been alluding to,
the difficulty of stealing from prose as much distinctness of colour
and clearness of outline as can be imported into verse with as little
sacrifice as possible of melody.
If poetry can in some degree invade the domain of prose, so on the other hand prose can at times invade the domain of poetry, and no doubt the prose of Plato-what is called poetical proseis a legitimate form of art. Poetry, the earliest form of literature, is also the final and ideal form of all pure literature; and, when Landor insists that poetry and poetical prose are antagonistic, we must remember that Landor's judgments are mostly based on feeling, and that his hatred of Plato would be quite sufficient basis with him for an entire system of criticism upon poetical prose. As with Carlyle, there was a time in his life when Plato had serious thoughts of becoming a poet. And perhaps, like Carlyle, having the good sense to see his true function, he himself desisted from writing, and strictly forbade other men to v-r1te, in verse. If we consider this, and if we consider that certain of the great English masters of poetic prose of the 17th century were as incapable of writing in metre as their followers Richter and Carlyle, we shall hardly escape the conclusion on the one hand that the faculty of writing poetry is quite another faculty than that of producing work in the arts most closely allied to it, music and prose, but that on the other hand there is nothing antagonistic between these faculties.
3. Comparative Value in Expressional Power.-~There is one great point of superiority that musical art exhibits over metrical art This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for harmony in the musician's sense. The finest music of Aeschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all only a succession of melodious notes, and, in endeavouring to catch the harmonic intent of strophe, anti strophe and epode in the Greek chorus and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing memory into our service. We have to recall by memory the waves that have gone before, and then to imagine their harmonic power in relation to the waves at present occupying the ear. Counterpoint, therefore, is not to be achieved by the metricise, even though he be Pindar himself; but in music this perfect ideal harmony was foreshadowed perhaps in the earliest writing. We know at least that as early as the 12th century counterpoint began to show a vigorous life, and the study of it is now a familiar branch of musical science. Now, inasmuch as “ nature's own hymn ” is and must be the harmonic blending of apparently Rh ythm.
independent and apparently discordant notes, among the arts whose appeal is through the ear that which can achieve counterpoint must perhaps rank as a pure art above one which cannot achieve it. We are of course speaking here of metre only. We have not space to inquire whether the counterpoint of absolute poetry is the harmony underlying apparently discordant emotions -the emotion produced by a word being more persistent than the emotion produced by an inarticulate sound. But if poetry falls behind music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts, and here, as we have seen, it enters into direct competition with the art of prose. It can use the emphasis of sound, not for its own sake merely, but to strengthen the emphasis of sense, and can thus give a fuller and more adequate expression to the soul of man than music at its highest can give. With regard to prose, no doubt such writing as Plato's description of the chariot of the soul, his description of the island of Atlantis, or of Er's visit to the place of departed souls, comes but a short way behind poetry in imaginative and even rhythmic appeal. It is impossible, however, here to do more than touch upon the subject of the rhythm of prose in its relation to the rhythm of poetry; for in this matter the genius of each individual language has to be taken into account.
Perhaps it may be said that deeper than all the rhythm of art is that rhythm which art would fain catch, the rhythm of nature; for the rhythm of nature is the rhythm of life itself. This rhythm can be caught by prose as well as by poetry, such prose, for instance, as that of the English Bible. Certainly the rhythm of verse at its highest, such, for instance, as that of Shakespeare's greatest writings, is nothing more and nothing less than the metre of that energy of the spirit which surges within the bosom of him who speaks, whether he speak in verse or in impassioned prose. Being rhythm, it is of course governed by law, but it is a law which transcends in subtlety the conscious art of the metricise and is only caught by the poet in his most inspired moods, a law which, being part of nature's own sanctions, can of course never be formulated but only expressed, as it is expressed in the melody of the bird, in the inscrutable harmony of the entire bird-chorus of a thicket, in the whisper of the leaves of the tree, and in the song or wail of wind and sea. Now is not this rhythm of nature represented by that “ sense rhythm ” which prose can catch as well as poetry, that sense rhythm whose finest expressions are to be found in the Bible, Hebrew and English, and in the biblical movements of the English Prayer Book, and in the dramatic prose of Shakespeare at its best? Whether it is caught by prose or by verse, one of the virtues of the rhythm of nature is that it is translatable. Hamlet's peroration about man and Raleigh's apostrophe to death are as translatable into other languages as are the Hebrew psalms, or as is Manu's magnificent passage about the singleness of man:-
“Single is each man born into the world; sin le he dies; single he receives the reward of his good deeds, and single the punishment of his evil deeds. When he dies his body lies like a fallen tree upon the earth, but his virtue accompanies his soul. Wherefore let man harvest and garner virtue, so that he may have an inseparable companion in traversing that gloom which is so hard to be traversed." Here the rhythm, being the inevitable movement of emotion and “ sense, ” can be cauglit and translated by every literature under the sun. While, however, the great goal before the poet is to compel the listener to expect his caesuric efiects, the great goal before the writer of poetic prose is in the very opposite direction; it is to make use of the concrete figures and impassioned
