For
that is the essence of a prosody. Verse may be rhythmical;
it may be merely alliterative; it may, like the French,
depend wholly on the (quasi) regular recurrence of the rhyme;
or, like the Hebrew, it may consist in the strangely fanciful
device of repeating the same idea. It does not matter on
what principle the law is based, so it be a law. It may be
pure convention; it may have no inherent beauty; all that we
have a right to ask of any prosody is, that it shall lay down
a pattern for the writer, and that what it lays down shall be
neither too easy nor too hard. Hence it comes that it is
much easier for men of equal facility to write fairly
pleasing verse than reasonably interesting prose; for in
prose the pattern itself has to be invented, and the
difficulties first created before they can be solved. Hence,
again, there follows the peculiar greatness of the true
versifier: such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Victor Hugo,
whom I place beside them as versifier merely, not as poet.
These not only knit and knot the logical texture of the style
with all the dexterity and strength of prose; they not only
fill up the pattern of the verse with infinite variety and
sober wit; but they give us, besides, a rare and special
pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint,
with which they follow at the same time, and now contrast,
and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the
verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a little further
on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and
both will reach their solution on the same ringing syllable.
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