But let us select them from the pages of the same
writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance,
Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of HENRY IV., a fine
flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second manner, and set
it side by side with Falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv.
scene iii.; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken
throughout by Rosalind and Orlando; compare, for example, the
first speech of all, Orlando's speech to Adam, with what
passage it shall please you to select - the Seven Ages from
the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as Othello's
farewell to war; and still you will be able to perceive, if
you have an ear for that class of music, a certain superior
degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of
the parts; a balance in the swing and the return as of a
throbbing pendulum. We must not, in things temporal, take
from those who have little, the little that they have; the
merits of prose are inferior, but they are not the same; it
is a little kingdom, but an independent.
3. RHYTHM OF THE PHRASE. - Some way back, I used a word
which still awaits an application. Each phrase, I said, was
to be comely; but what is a comely phrase? In all ideal and
material points, literature, being a representative art, must
look for analogies to painting and the like; but in what is
technical and executive, being a temporal art, it must seek
for them in music. Each phrase of each sentence, like an air
or a recitative in music, should be so artfully compounded
out of long and short, out of accented and unaccented, as to
gratify the sensual ear.
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