THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GALLOWAY & PORTER LTD.

NEWASECCND HAND BOOKSELLER!

3O SIDNEY STREET, CAMBRIDGE

If NGl

A HISTORY OF
ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO

DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.

TORONTO

A HISTORY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

M.A. OXON. 5 HON. LL.D. ABERD. ', HON. D.LITT. DURH.

FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY ; HONORARY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORI>

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Nihil, quod prosa scriptum, non redigi [potest] in quaedam
versiculorum genera vel in membra. . . . Neque enim loqui
possumus nisi e syllabis brevibus ac longis, ex quibus pedes
fiunt. QUINTILIAN, Inst. Orator, ix. iv. 52, 61.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1912

Cofiage
Ubrary

TK.

PREFACE

THE work which I am now attempting, and which was,
in an indirect fashion, promised or aspired to in the
History of English Prosody (iii. 20 and elsewhere), may
be said to be a carrying out of lines laid down a good
deal earlier than those of the History of Prosody itself.
It is now some six and thirty years since Lord Morley of
Blackburn, then editor of the Fortnightly Review, after
most kindly honouring a draft at sight which I had drawn
upon him, uninvited and unintroduced, in the shape of a
paper on Charles Baudelaire, asked me to write something
else on " English Prose Style," * a matter on which, though
always interested in it from the time when, as a mere
boy, I read De Quincey, I had never yet formulated any
very precise ideas. About this time, or shortly after, I
came into abundant practice as a reviewer, and had to
keep the subject before me ; while, some years later still,
the late Mr. Kegan Paul asked me to deal still more
elaborately with it in the Preface to a collection of
Extracts. 2 By this time I had systematised my ideas on
the subject to some not inconsiderable extent, and the
idea of formal scansion of English prose (if I had known
of Bishop Hurd's attempts I certainly had forgotten all
about them) first regularly suggested itself. 3 Of this I

1 "Modern English Prose/' F.R., February 1876.

2 Specimens of English Prose Style (London, 1885). Both this paper and
the preceding are reprinted in Miscellaneous Essays (London, 1892).

3 I did not know Mason's book, v. inf., till much later.

vi A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

have never left hold since, being much stimulated by the
regular and professional study of the remarks of Aristotle, 1
Quintilian, and others on prose rhythm in their respective
languages. A further stimulus was also administered,
perhaps a decade later, by that remark of Dr. Lawrence's
to which I draw fuller attention elsewhere. 2 But the causes
which prevented me from undertaking other things see
Prefaces to the Histories of Criticism and of English Prosody
and then these things themselves, kept it back, not to
mention that, for some time, there was a chance of the
subject being taken up by a friend of excellent competence.
He, however, dropped it, 3 not, I believe, being able to
arrive at conclusions sufficiently definite to satisfy him ;
and on finding that he had finally given up the notion, I

threw out the hint above referred to. It now remains to

be seen whether I shall be able to make something of the
matter. The attempt, if made, may not be quite useless,
and in making it I shall certainly be able also to administer
divers delectable draughts of example. The expense of
my own time and trouble at least has not been grudged ;
though the amount of both demanded by the task cannot
easily be overrated.

There is hardly more than one point of fact on which
I may say a further prefatory word. Although I have no
fault to find with the reception accorded to the Histories
above mentioned though I have rather to acknowledge a
most generous welcome it appeared to me, in both cases,
that a somewhat extravagant, not to say erroneous, mean-
ing was attachedjby some readers, to the word " History."
They appeared to demand, not only a complete account
of the ort, but an exhaustive examination of the Start.

1 I had not " taken up " the Rhetoric or the Poetics at Oxford, because there
was in my time an idea, encouraged by some tutors, that neither was, as a
book, bien vu in certain high quarters. 2 V. inf. p. 10.

3 Not wholly (v. inf. p. 464 note), but as the subject of a complete history
or treatise.

PREFACE vii

Now, on the possibility, and still more on the use, of this
latter, in regard to the majority of subjects, I am something
of a sceptic ; and even when I acknowledge the felicity
of knowing the causes of things, I think it well to know
the things themselves first. I do not, however, intend
to neglect theory altogether, and some generalising
suggestions will be found in the Interchapters which
summarise the successive Periods, as well as in the
Conclusion, and especially in Appendix III. But I wish
chiefly to bring out the facts of this interesting and much
neglected matter ; and to indicate the additional delecta-
tion which attends the study of them. To sport with
Amaryllis (if Amaryllis be poetry) may be best ; but there
remains a Neaera in prose, and the tangles of her hair
are not to be despised by the sportsman-lover.

As I approach, contemplating it still from whatever
distance, the end of these studies of metre and rhythm
which I may never reach, that sense of the " unending
endless quest," 1 which I suppose all but very self-satisfied
and self-sufficient persons feel, impresses itself more and
more upon me. An, I suppose, youthful reviewer of some
different but kindred work of mine not very long ago,
reproached me with ignorance or neglect of the fact that
he and his generation had quite given up positive deliver-
ances in criticism. They regarded it (I think he said) as
hopeless and wrong to " pin " something or other " to the
rainbow beauty of what was really a miracle of incrusta-
tion." The proceeding appeared to me to be difficult, if
not impossible, and the phrase to be really a miracle of
galimatias. But, as a fact, I hope that almost all who
have read me will acquit me of the impudence or the
folly of thinking that I could say even an interim last
word on the secrets of rhythmical charm, whether in the

1 The last words of Longfellow's proem to Ultima Thule, his last' pub-
lished work.

viii A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

slightly more tangible form of verse, or the far more
intangible one of prose. Here, as everywhere, and almost
more than anywhere, beauty incipit in mysterio as well as
exit in mysterium. Here, and almost more also, it is as
when you see a face and say to it with Browning

Lie back ; could thought of mine improve you ?

and decide that, if improvement is impossible, the inter-
pretation of the actual charm is equally so. You can
get some way towards the secret. The spring of the
wing of the nostril ; the plunge into the clear pool of the
eyes, with its impenetrable background of agate or lapis
lazuli, of chrysoprase or avanturine ; the sweep of the cheek-
edge from ear to chin ; the straight descent, or curved and
recurved wave, of the profile ; the azure net-work of the
closed eyelids ; " the fringed curtains " at their juncture ; '
the infinite intricacies of the mouth and hair, ask yourself
about any one of these, and you cannot tell why it is beau-
tiful, why the combination of the whole makes a beautiful
face. But you can, to some extent, fix for yourself the
character of those parts and the composition of that whole,
and, so far at least, you are ahead of the mere gaper who
stares and " likes grossly."

So it is with literature. You can never get at the
final entelechy which differentiates Shelley and Shake-
speare from the average versifier, Cluvienus and myself
from Pater or from Browne. But you can attend to
the feature -composition of the beautiful face, to the
quality of the beautiful features, in each of these masters,
and so you can dignify and intensify your appreciation of
them. That this is best to be done in prose, as in verse,
by the application of the foot-system that is to say, by
studying the combinations of the two great sound-qualities
which, for my part, I call, as my fathers called them from
the beginning, " long " and u short," but which you may call

PREFACE ix

anything you like, so long as you observe the difference
and respect the grouping I may almost say I know ;
having observed the utter practical failure of all other
systems in verse, and the absence even of any attempt to
apply any other to prose.

With this I may leave the present essay to its
chances ; only repeating my acquaintance with two quota-
tions which I made thirty-six years ago when touching,
for the first time, the subject of Prose Style generally.
One was Nicholas Breton's warning to somebody " not to
talk too much of it, having so little of it," and the other,
Diderot's epigram on Beccaria's ouvrage sur le style oit il
riy a point de style. These are, of course, " palpable hits "
enough. But you may criticise without being able to
create, and you may love beauty, and to the possible
extent understand it, without being beautiful. 1

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

THE ATHEN^UM, June 15, 1912.

1 It ought not to be necessary, but perhaps is desirable, to emphasise the
fact that this attempts only to be a History of English Prose Rhythm, illus-
trated by examples from writers greater and lesser not a History of English
Prose Style generally. And of these examples I have (with the kind permission
of the publishers and the editor) chosen as many as I could from Sir Henry
Craik's English Prose Selections (5 vols., London, 1890-96), where the reader
will often find useful contexts, many other illustrations, and, as it were, a
Chrestomathy to this History. But I have, of course, not confined myself to
this even in the later part ; while I have constantly re-read books, and some
whole authors, to " freshen the atmosphere," and make sure that my examples
were exemplary. The passages chosen from Old and Middle English owe
nothing to any previous collection, though some of them may necessarily have
appeared in one or another. I must apologise for any errors left in foot-
division and quantification things extremely difficult to get right, especially
with eyes as weak as mine. In this, and in matters generally ranked as more
important, I owe, yet once more, infinite thanks to my old helpers, Professors
Ker, Elton, and Gregory Smith.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY OF PROSE RHYTHM GENERALLY, AND OF THE
HISTORY OF ITS STUDY

FACE

The beginnings in Greek and Latin Aristotle Demetrius (?)

Dionysius Quintilian Others, Cicero Longinus . . I

CHAPTER II

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

General characteristics of Old English prose Its drawbacks and advan-
tages in vocabulary and compounds Its "synthetic" character
Intermixture of prosaic and poetic style Latin influence Passages
for examination Ethelbald's grant to the Bishop of Worcester
The "Slaying of Cynewulf " Remarks Rhythmical effect of
inflections Of compounds, etc. Um endings, consonant groups,
etc. General word-rhythm Remarks on the rhythm of the com-
position And its relations to verse Absence of alliteration
Alfred's translations The tenth century The Blickling Homilies
Interim summary of prose before ^Elfric ^Elfric, the Colloquy
The Homilies Specimen passages Remarks on them Later
examples, Wulfstan Apollonius of Tyre General survey and
summary . . . . . . .10

CHAPTER III

THE FORMATION OF PROSE RHYTHM IN MIDDLE ENGLISH
BEFORE C. 1350

Importance and difficulty of Early and Middle English in our subject
The Ancren Riwle Analysis of passages "The Wooing of Our
Lord" Other twelfth and thirteenth century pieces General
remarks on early Middle English prose Influence of the Vulgate,
and of French prose . . . . . .43

xii A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM
CHAPTER IV

FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY

PAGE

English made a school language The four prosemen of the late four-
teenth century Wyclif The Tracts and Sermons The translation
of the Bible Trevisa Sir John Mandeville Chaucer His
various prose pieces Their somewhat neglected importance The
Parson's Tale The Tale of Melibee Its blank verse The
Astrolabe The Boethius The fifteenth century Its real im-
portance Pecock and the Represser His syntax His compound
equivalents The Fasten Letters Malory His prose and the
earlier verse Morte Guinevere's last meeting with Lancelot The
Lancelot dirge The Throwing of Excalibur His devices His
excellence a rather lonely one Berners Style of his romance
translations And contrast of their Prefaces Fisher . . 56

INTERCHAPTER I . . . . .102

CHAPTER V

THE FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER

Shorter retrospect Continuance of rhetorical influence : the Cambridge
School Cheke : his "bankruptcy" theory Its fallacy Wilson
and " ink-horn terms " The excuses Ascham Tyndale The
Prayer- Book (Cranmer ?) Latimer Profane translations Lyly
and Euphuism : its failure in rhythm Hooker : his achievement
Rhythm-sweep And fingering of particular words Sidney . 1 14

CHAPTER VI

THE AUTHORISED VERSION AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE
ORNATE STYLE

The coming of harvest The Authorised Version of the Bible The
sixtieth chapter of the book of Isaiah A.V., Septuagint, and
Vulgate scanned Discussion of each Earlier English versions
for comparison : Coverdale The " Bishops' " Remarks on them
Geneva and Douay A New Testament example, the Charity
passage of / Cor. : atrocities of the Revisers The older versions
here Results of scrutiny Observation on use of synonyms In-
dividual writers Raleigh Greville Donne The palmiest days
Bacon (?) Burton Beauties and faults Milton Disputes
about his prose, and their causes Close connection of Milton's
style with oratory Some of its faults Partial foot-analysis
Taylor : the general high estimate of him Examples Rhythmical
characteristics Browne : Coleridge's charge against him Special
character of his charm, and special treatment of it required The

CONTENTS

finale of Urn Burial Interim observation on overture The close
of the Garden of Cyrus Short passages from Religio Medici
From the Hydriotaphia From the Garden of Cyrus The Letter
to a Friend And Christian Morals. Others perforce omitted . 141

CHAPTER VII

THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN

The charm of seventeenth - century ornateness Glanvill But such
omateness not for all work The forging of the plant for this Ben
Jonson High value of the Discoveries Hobbes His eminence
and its contrasted character The "Race" and "Love" passages
of Human Nature Clarendon ..... 201

INTERCHAPTER II . . . - . 217

CHAPTER VIII

AUGUSTAN PROSE

The prevailing of the plain style The group of 1630 Distribution of
the chapter Cowley Dryden South Halifax Temple and his
masterpiece The plainest styles, vulgar and not vulgar The non-
vulgarians : L'Estrange and Tom Brown Bunyan The vulgarians
The effect of abbreviations Instances from Rymer, etc. Defoe
Swift The rhythmical character of irony Addison Kurd's
dealings with his rhythm His supposed " Addisonian termina-
tion" His general view of Addison's "harmony" Specimens
of Addison himself Rhythmical analysis of them Selections of
other Queen Anne men necessary Berkeley Shaftesbury
Bolingbroke Letter-writers and novelists to be shortly dealt with
Conyers Middleton Efforts at variety Adam Smith Interim
observations on this prose Attempts to raise it Johnson : differ-
ent views respecting him His relation to Browne Characteristics
of the Johnsonian style Burke : his oratorical ethos His declared
method Early examples Middle Later Examples and com-
ments Gibbon : his peculiarity Its general effect, and that of
the other reformers The standard Georgian style Southey . 227

INTERCHAPTER III 288

CHAPTER IX

THE REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION

The necessity of reaction Its causes and bents Preoccupation of the
ground by poetry ; the Lake group and Scott Byron, Shelley,
and Keats The minors : Moore The Epicurean Return to

xiv A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

Coleridge in Anima Poetae General descriptive character of these
early passages The three chief pioneers De Quincey Specimen
phrases and passages, with analysis and comment The Dream-
Fugue and the Suspiria the chief quarries Elaborate rhythm by
no means often aimed at elsewhere Its connection with dream
The Suspiria again The Autobiography De Quincey's relation
to poetry Wilson Landor : his characteristics The relations of
his poetry and his prose His critical utterances on the subject
Results in a " prose grand style " Specimens Some general ob-
servations The four kinds of rhythm in relation to prose I. Non-
prosaic rhythm or poetry II. Hybrid verse-prose III. Pure
prose highly rhythmed IV. Prose in general . . . 293

CHAPTER X

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860

The coexistence of different styles in 1820 Momentary return to Landor
Comparative merits The "standard" still prevalent, but with a
tendency to degradation Definition of "slovenliness" Return to
examples Coleridge again Jeffrey Note on italics Chalmers
Note on Irving Hazlitt Lamb Leigh Hunt Carlyle
Macaulay The novelists: Miss Austen and Peacock Lord
Beaconsfield Dickens Thackeray Newman . . . 347

CHAPTER XI

RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY PROSE

1843 Modern Painters Influences on Ruskin's style His subjects
His practice in verse, and its marks on his prose Kingsley : his
pure Ruskinian prose His "song-shape" style Charlotte Bronte
"George Eliot" Mr. Froude Matthew Arnold His peculiar
system of repetition Examples, and discussion of it Mansel A
false censure corrected Pater His quietism His apes: Mr.
Frederick Myers Mr. Swinburne The mixed influences in him
Examples in great and little William Morris " Wardour
Street " or not ? George Meredith : his Meredithesity
Stevenson . . . . . . -39'

CONCLUSION 443

APPENDICES (I. Stave-Prose Poetry Ossian, Blake, Whitman,
etc. II. Mason on Prosaic Numbers. III. Table of Axioms,
Inferences, and Suggestions) ..... 467

INDEX .483

H
W
W

<
H

I I

b -4-T u I I fi _C

-J^ tn rt o ^ 3 o

Is^Tifsl

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY - OF PROSE RHYTHM GENERALLY,
AND OF THE HISTORY OF ITS STUDY

The beginnings in Greek and Latin Aristotle Demetrius (?)
Dionysius Quintilian Others, Cicero Longinus.

THAT it is possible to use prose without knowing or The begin
thinking anything about it, is established by one of the
great and greatly quoted things which it is now considered
unlawful to mention, because everybody is supposed to
know them ; and which, in the near future of what is
now called education, nobody at all will know. That it
is possible, and not undesirable, to consider prose almost as
curiously as verse itself, is a more contentious proposition.
It is, however, certain, on the one hand, that, in the very
dawn of criticism, Aristotle, who threw light on so many
things, practically started the whole enquiry in which
this book is an essay, by his description of prose as
" neither possessing metre nor destitute of rhythm " ; l and
that, in this context of the Rhetoric, he discussed Greek
prose scansion with some fulness. It is equally certain
that this distinction one of those which commend them-
selves, as soon as proposed, to almost every intelligence
was followed, though not probably to any very great
extent, 2 by critics both Greek and Latin. And we possess,

JS X^ews Set /j.rfre <-fj./j.eTpov elvai fji-qre S,ppvd^ov (Rhet. III.
viii. I ). Isocrates, in a treatise of which we have only fragments, seems to
have preceded Aristotle, with whom he but in part agrees. See Benseler's
edition (Leipzig, 1877), ii. 276 ; or Cope and Sandys on the Rhetoric, vol. iii.
p. 83 (Cambridge, 1877), and note I next page.

2 The ordinary run of Greek writers in their " Arts" of rhetoric seem to

m B

2 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

in particular, a consideration of Latin prose rhythm by
Quintilian, which forms a not unworthy pendant to
Aristotle's in regard to Greek. It is unfortunate, no
doubt, that, from the nature of the case, these passages
are among the obscurest of their respective authors'.
Whether we have much certain knowledge as to even the
vowel sounds of Greek and Latin, is a matter of grave
doubt to some of us ; that we have practically no know-
ledge at all on the almost more important points of
their intonation, accentuation, and general pronunciation,
is, to some of those some, a certainty.

Aristotle. Partly owing to this, and partly to other causes,

Aristotle's brief remarks as to the details of the subject
are somewhat obscure ; and they display a musical-
mathematical preoccupation which hardly applies to
modern languages, and which has certainly misled some
modern enquirers. Others, more wary, must admit that
they here see, if not always darkly, yet never more than
partly in the antique glass. When Aristotle says that
spondaic-dactylic (i.e. heroic) rhythm is too stately, too
little varied, and not well enough adapted to ordinary
conversation for prose ; that iambic, though thoroughly
conversational, is too conversational, and not stately
enough ; and that trochaic is too tripping, 1 we know
what he means, though there may be a faint puzzle even
here as to how the metre of the Prometheus and the
Agamemnon can be wanting in stateliness. When he
says that " the paeon remains," he is providing for us a
great door and effectual ; but his reasons, if we attend

have eschewed it ; but the three greatest the uncertain Demetrius in the De
Interpretations, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Longinus do not.

1 Isocrates, on the other hand, seems to have preferred " a mixture of
iambic and trochaic." The whole passage, to be also found in Walz among
the scholia on Hermogenes, runs thus : " But let not prose be altogether
prose, for it would be dry ; nor metred, for that would attract too much
attention (Kara<f>a.i>ts ydp) ; but let it be mingled with all kinds of metres,
especially iambic and trochaic." There are complete trimeters in "the
old man eloquent." But we ought to remember that he was groping his way,
and that these familiar and simple rhythms are apt to suggest themselves
before the ear detects the superiority, for prose, of the combination of them
into paeons and other four- or even five-syllabled feet In two of the four
possible forms the paeon is "a mixture of iambic and trochaic."

INTRODUCTORY

too much to them, seem likely to shut that door again ;
for he says that " heroic " rhythm (spondaic or dactylic)
is as one to one (i.e. two longs, or one long and two shorts
= half-longs), iambic or trochaic as two to one (long, two
halves, and short, one), but the paeon (one long and three
shorts) as whole and half (to one). Even after we have
arrived at the meaning of this, which is itself not quite
sun-clear, a puzzle remains, not indeed insoluble, but a
puzzle. 1 For one may ask in vain, in the first place, for
an explanation of the precise virtue in the " one and a
half to one " relation ; and, in the second, what he means
by saying that you cannot construct metre out of paeons,
whereas you certainly can.

There are therefore, and could not but be, difficulties
in the way of taking Aristotle as a guide in detail, besides
the great one greater in prose than in verse that he is
speaking of Greek and we of English. But we have at
any rate got two great possible lights and leading-strings
from him. One is the saying that prose must be neither
" emmetric " nor " arrhythmic " ; the other is the indication
of the paeon, or four-syllabled foot, as the base-rhythm.

The mysterious Demetrius, in sections 38 to 43 of his Demetrius (?).
treatise, deals with prose rhythm, basing himself expressly
on Aristotle, repeating much from him, and disagreeing
with his limitation of the possible paeonic forms. He
has, however, an interesting remark on the dignity of
Thucydides as attained by the long syllables he uses,
which would look as if Demetrius considered not merely
the paeon, but its opposite the epitrite, 2 as admissible.

1 The paeon being composed of three short syllables and one long one,
" two and a half" might seem to be its equivalent : but Aristotle, as before,
is splitting the foot up. Every paeon consists of two halves, in one of which
there is a long syllable, while in the other there is not, so that they stand to
each other in the relation of three to two, or one and a half to one. Aristotle
seems to have recognised only two paeons that with the long syllable at the
beginning, and that with it at the end. In English all forms of the foot
occur, but the commonest and most valuable has the long in the third place.

2 One short and three long as opposed to one long and three short. The
table of feet prefixed to this chapter should be constantly consulted by those
to whom the names are not familiar. In the opening sentence of the great
History which Demetrius quotes, 'Aflijccuos (with wtypa\f/e following) is an
epitrite by position, and 'AQrivaluv one of itself.

4 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

But he thinks that recurrent spondees exceed the bounds
of prose. And he does not say much more.

Dionysius. Dionysius also refers to Aristotle as indeed does

Cicero, who naturally attacks the subject, more than others,
from the specially elocutionary point of view, and from
whose references to it most moderns, in the comparatively
few cases in which it was touched, probably in turn
derived their suggestions. But the Halicarnassian here,
as in not a few other cases, makes the subject his own by
a bold advance on the Stagirite. " No rhythm whatever,"
he says, 1 and says truly, " is banished from unmetred
composition, any more than from that in metre." So
that he maintains Aristotle's distinction of the emmetric
and arrhythmic, while removing (as is in some lan-
guages undoubtedly right) the restriction to particular
rhythms.

Quintiiian. The Quintilian passage 2 is very much longer than
Aristotle's, and it has been contaminated by the infusion
of a much later rhetorical abuse of terms. Because certain
rhythms, considered merely in themselves, and for their
mathematical -musical value, represent the same values,
men had got into a fatal habit (which is doing harm to
this day) of calling all three-time double in this sense
" dactylic." Quintilian, indeed, warns his readers most
carefully that, in verse, an anapaest is a totally different
thing from a dactyl. But this supposed abstract equi-
valence (not the inherited and consecrated licence as in
verse) injures his words, for our use, to some extent. His
drift, however, is all right, and that unfailing common -
sense in which he is the equal of any writer, makes the
following remarks of the highest value : that, though
the appearance of an entire verse in prose is " the ugliest
fault of all," and even part of one risks inelegance, still
" actual verses often escape us without our perceiving
them " ; that " though the whole body and course of
prose is pervaded by number, and we cannot even speak
except in longs and shorts, the materials of feet," yet
prose must, above all, be " varied in composition " ; and

1 In the De Composilione, xviii. 2 Inst. Orat. IX. iv. 45-121.

INTRODUCTORY 5

that " no system will be good if ... it go always on
the same feet." 1

Differing from Aristotle and Cicero, but it would seem
resting on Isocrates, he would in one place exclude four-
and five-syllabled feet from prose scansion, and confine
his list to ordinary double and triple measures of verse,

though he excludes the molossus ( ). Yet he

lets the longer in again later, and in fact seems to have
been in two minds on the subject, as well as on some
others. The point of importance is that he, like Aristotle
and Cicero, has no doubt of the possibility and propriety
of applying longs and shorts, in their necessary varieties
of combination, to the interpretation of prose rhythm.
His insistence on Variety as the be-all and end-all of
this rhythm rests on what we shall perhaps find to be
the one " rock that abides " in our treacherous and quick-
sand-like matter. And we shall probably find also only
too much reason to agree with him that " the manage-
ment [either in creation or in criticism] of feet in prose is
more difficult than in verse," though there may be better
chance, for obvious reasons, of " windfalls of the Muses "
and haphazard success.

These are, of course, not the only authorities that Others
might be cited. As far as Latin is concerned some might
consider Cicero more important even than Quintilian.
A practising orator, who was also an untiring theoretical
student of oratory, could not fail to devote special
attention to a matter so intimately affecting his pro-
fessional efforts, though it is no doubt well to remember
that oratorical rhythm is by no means the only rhythm of
prose, and that it may injuriously affect the reading aloud
(and still more the reading to oneself) of non-oratorical
matter. He is full of curious touches ; though the
curiosity often enforces the lesson hinted at above and to
be repeated below.

In fact, I confess to having been gratified when a
person of undoubted competence, to whom I had used

1 A larger cento will be found in the present writer's Loci Critici (London
and New York, 1903) pp. 65, 66.

6 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

the word <f>\vapia in reference to some of the Tullian
remarks on this subject, laughed and did not disagree.
Cicero had got hold of Aristotle (whom he partly mis-
quotes) and knew Isocrates ; but his own remarks on the
subject are, however well expressed, not much more
"ingoing" than Mr. Pope's on moral philosophy. There
is something in the Orator, more in the De Oratore, and
perhaps a few remarks elsewhere ; but it all comes to very
little. As good a thing as any, though not commonly
quoted, is the observation, 1 of the general type which the
author can conceive fairly well and express excellently,
est autem etiam in dicendo quidam cantus obscurior
(" there is in speaking a kind of underhum of song ").
His best strictly technical criticism 2 seems to me to be
that the dochmiac, which he confines to one only of its
numerous forms (short, two longs, short, and long), quovis
loco aptus est, though he will not have it repeated. And
there is another good one, that by pause you can destroy
the bad effect of a continuous iambic run. But what has
been said above remains true, and the oratorical nisus
shows itself in his excessive attention to the ends of
sentences ; which are, of course, important, but hardly
more so than other parts. His occasional obscurities and
inconsistencies troubled the good Mason (see App. II.)
not a little.

Longinus. We must not, however, pass over in silence, 3 or with a

mere mention, the treatment of the subject by the greatest
of ancient, perhaps of all critics the writer whom all the
restless meddling and peddling of so-called scholarship
still need not prevent any one who appreciates the laws
of literary evidence from identifying (at least under
caution) with Longinus of Athens and Palmyra. He
had, though with a certain vacillation of language,
mentioned rhythm, or at least " harmony " of construction,
as one of his five " sources " of Sublimity ; and at his
thirty - ninth chapter he comes to it more specially.

1 Orator, xvii. 57 (ed. Wilkins, Oxford, n.d.).

2 Ibid. Ixiv. 218.

3 That stupor mundi rhetorici, Hermogenes, dealt with the subject, but
not elaborately : we will not dwell on him.

INTRODUCTORY

Unfortunately for us, however, he had, he tells us, published
two books on the subject already ; and therefore cuts it
short here. Whether these dealt with rhythm and metre
generally, or with prose rhythm specially, we cannot, of
course, be sure or even guess. But it is clear that though
in other parts of the treatise he includes and discusses
poetry, he is here thinking of oratory in the first place, if
not wholly. He opens with one of his most eloquent
eulogies of "heavenly harmony" itself its power of
mastering the soul and compelling the very body to
imitative movement how it creates and reinforces all the
changing forms of beauty in words and thoughts, and so
forth. And then he illustrates with a sentence of
Demosthenes, couched, as he says (it is, according to a
warning just given, not perfectly easy to follow him),
"wholly in the dactylic measure," but ending in a first
paeon (he does not call it so), which gives a grandeur
vanishing alike at the subtraction of a syllable and the
addition of one.

But after a digression of more general character he
turns from advocacy to warning. As nothing raises style
more than grandeur and harmony of rhythm, so nothing
degrades it so much as mincing or tripping effeminacy
of movement pyrrhics and trochees and double trochees
suggesting regular dance-tune. 1 And he shows us how
acute and well-trained the ears of a Greek must have been
by saying that the audience of such a style sometimes
actually beat time like dancers with the speaker not
apparently from any wish to ridicule him, but unable to
resist the temptation and infection. There is, as has been
admitted, not a little in this that is difficult ; but the
general drift of it is clear enough and thoroughly germane
to our general subject. It was not impossibly the curious
popularity of Longinus in the eighteenth century which
put Mason and Hurd on the track of their rhythmical

1 Aristotle had already stigmatised the poor trochee as " rather cancan-ish "
KopdaxiKilrrfpos. This certainly does not apply in English, where the trochee
is the acorn-drop (in fall and rebound) from our ancestral oaks, and the trickle
of the water-spring from the rock whence we were hewn.

8 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

analysis of prose, though Cicero is their more probable
and oftener cited guide.

It may be said, therefore, that these ancients set us in
the right method ; and if it is objected that our results
will be totally different from theirs, it must be repeated
that this objection, akin to one often made as to prosodic
scansion, is the fruit of a disastrous misunderstanding.

English feet will not produce the same effects, and permit
of the same combinations, as Greek feet, because Greek is
Greek and English is English. But they bear the same
relation to English that Greek feet do to Greek, and they
are equally useful and indispensable instruments in the
analysis of rhythmical composition. The passage which
I have taken as motto is golden : " We cannot even
speak except in longs and shorts ; and longs and shorts
are the material of feet."

The history which is to follow should show amply the
impossibility of early conscious application of any simifer
analysis to English ; though it is hoped that it will also
show something more. If even our prosodic writing is
late, scanty, and for the most part frankly unsatisfactory
at first, it could not be expected that this much more
difficult and disputable enquiry should be entered upon
early. Ben Jonson is almost the first person I can
think of who is likely to have thought much about the
matter ; and it is noteworthy that his part disciple
Hobbes, when he wrote his own remarkable "brief" of
Aristotle's Rhetoric, simply omitted the portion concern-
ing rhythm. Mason and Kurd, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, are the first critics who, to my
knowledge, treated prose rhythm seriously ; and of the
work of both account will be found in the proper place.
Samuel Woodford 1 indeed, a man noticeable in many
ways, had glanced at the connection between blank verse
and prose ; and Johnson, in some of his denunciations of
" blanks," looks as if he ought to have had glimpses
about the matter. But in fact, with occasional " sports "
and exceptions, which should be duly chronicled later,

1 See History of Prosody, Hi. 552, note 7.

INTRODUCTORY

the subject has remained unhandled stuff and untrodden
ground, or very nearly so, to the present day. 1

1 It is, perhaps, barely desirable to observe that these few pages have not
the least pretension to be an adequate account of the criticism of prose rhythm
in antiquity. I should very much like to write in extenso on the subject, but
such writing would be out of place here. The fullest, and in a way the
standard book on the subject is, I believe, E. Norden's Die antike Kunst-
prosa (Leipzig, 1898), which I have known since its appearance. But it
was not until after this chapter was in print that I came across Mr.
A. C. Clark's invaluable collection of, I think, all the passages cited above,
and certainly many others Fontes Prosae Numerosae (Oxford, 1909). The
English Preface is short and curiously unpretentious, but full of matter ; and
the collection itself is, as has been said, priceless. Much has recently been
written on Cicero's rhythms but for him v. sup. The present sketch is
merely intended to indicate the origins of the procedure adopted in what
follows, not the niceties of actual Greek and Latin arrangement. (After the
greater part of this book was in type, and when the present chapter was
already in revise for press, there appeared in the Church Quarterly Review
for April 1912 an interesting article, by Mr. John Shelly, based on Mr. Clark's
and some other books, and dealing with rhythm Latin and English -
ecclesiastical. As I had already stated infra (p. 133 note), I doubt whether
Latin cadences are patient of exact adjustment to English. I also doubt the
possibility of effectually introducing, with us, the so-called cursits. But our
literature on the subject is so scanty that I am glad to salute any new
companion -explorer, though I may add, as the book goes on, occasional
indications in note of what I think insufficient in a Latin explanation. )

CHAPTER II

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

General characteristics of Old English prose Its drawbacks and
advantages in vocabulary and compounds Its "synthetic"
character Intermixture of prosaic and poetic style Latin
influence Passages for examination Ethelbald's grant to the
Bishop of Worcester The " Slaying of Cynewulf " Remarks
Rhythmical effect of inflections Of compounds, etc. Um
endings, consonant groups, etc. General word -rhythm
Remarks on the rhythm of the composition And its relations
to verse Absence of alliteration Alfred's translations Th*e
tenth century The Blickling Homilies Interim summary of
prose before yElfric yElfric, the Colloquy The Homilies
Specimen passages Remarks on them Later examples,
Wulfstan Apollonius of Tyre General survey and summary.

General char-
acteristics of
Old English
prose.

IT is well known that Anglo-Saxon, or Old English,
prose stands in a rather peculiar relation to the corre-
sponding verse. 1 It is a sort of commonplace of literary
history that verse is always older than prose, and in the
case of most literatures especially modern ones it is

1 Dr. Lawrence's remark (see Preface), which so impressed me, is
as follows : " The true rhythm of the old English verse is not a matter
of mere antiquarian interest. Until it is understood the development of
English prose rhythm cannot be properly explained " ( Chapters on Alliterative
Verse, by John Lawrence, D.Litt., London, 1893). It was this, as I have
said, which set me on a new line of exploration, and I can never give it too
much credit or thanks for the "send-off." But my memory had, as I find
on reading Dr. Lawrence's tractate again after a good many years (during
which it had, after the wicked wont of pamphlets, "dived under"), deceived
me as to there being, in the body of the work, any working-out of this
suggestion. Such a working-out was not, in fact, in the least necessitated by
the title. On the contrary, Dr. Lawrence was not merely allowed but bound
to confine his attention, under that title, to what, no doubt, was the most
important feature of Anglo-Saxon verse-alliteration ; and was allowed, if not
bound, to devote his chief attention to two varieties of that feature "cross"
and "vowel" alliteration. Now these, though they certainly still furnish a

CHAP, ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 11

almost demonstrably so. Nor, perhaps, is there reason
to doubt that the law did extend to Anglo-Saxon itself,
and that the oldest forms of Beowulf and its companion
pieces, not to speak of lost matter, might be older than
any prose that existed, as they certainly were than any
prose that we have. At the same time it would as
certainly seem that prose of a fairly elaborate and
accomplished character began with us at a period
relatively much earlier than with other and especially
with Romance nations. We get no Old French prose
worth speaking of 1 till (and that rather doubtfully) the
latter part of the twelfth century. We have Old English
pretty certainly from the seventh, and quite certainly
from the eighth.

The quality of this prose may no doubt have been
exaggerated by the late Professor Earle in his interesting
and enthusiastic book 2 on the subject ; nor will the
present writer undertake to rank the tenth century with
the seventeenth and the nineteenth as the three great
ages of the vehicle in English. But undoubtedly the
goodness of Old English prose is remarkable, and could
hardly have escaped general observation had it not been
that most people who have dealt with it have been
either, as foreigners, 3 partially incapable of knowing good
English prose from bad, or else natives intent upon
points which have nothing to do with its goodness.

"riband in the cap" of English prose, can scarcely be said to dominate or
prescribe its rhythm in any way. Alliteration is often almost entirely absent
in some of the most exquisite of modern examples for instance, in Mr.
Pater's passage on Lionardo's landscape ; though it may be eminently
present in others, as in De Quincey's description of Our Lady of Sighs.
Moreover, some of Dr. Lawrence's dicta are certainly not applicable to
modern work, whatever they may be to ancient. But nothing can be further
from my intention than to enter into any polemic with him. " I owe him
a thousand pounds " for that sentence, and the rest hardly concerns me.

1 Of course there must have been we know, at least from assertion, that
there was in the case of St. Mummolenus and others spoken prose much
earlier ; but it has not come down, and prose does not seem to have been ever
used for literary purposes before noo, or for some time after that date.

2 English Prose (London, 1890).

3 A writer whom I greatly respect, but with whom I often disagree, once
objected that " we are all foreigners as to Old English and Middle English."
I should retort " Anglus sum, nihil Anglicanum," etc.

12 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

But the distinguo is all the more necessary here
because it has been so seldom applied. I hardly know
a single writer, except Mr. W. P. Ker, who has dealt with
Anglo-Saxon prose adequately, 1 and the space which he
had for so dealing with it was itself inadequate for taking
such aspects as the present. In order to judge it
properly we must, in the first place, remember its
limitations ; which were so many and so great that, while
they may justly reduce the positive critical estimate of
its achievements, they ought to exalt that estimate
relatively in almost a greater proportion.

its drawbacks The greatest of these drawbacks was not, perhaps,
and ad- fa Q limitation of the vocabulary, though undoubtedly

vantages in

vocabulary and this was a drawback. But it may be doubted whether
compounds, ^e ac j- ua i WO rd-Hst, which is very far from inconsiderable,
was insufficient for the tasks that it had to perform ;
and it possessed a power of compounding which, though
English has not really lost it, modern precision has sadly
hampered and hobbled. You may (Pecock, long after
Anglo-Saxon days, showed it) go too far in the direction
of substituting " star-witty man " for astrologer, and there
really is no necessity to ostracise " penetration " in
favour of " gothroughsomeness." But it is a great thing
to be able to do these things when you like ; and the
languages which, like French, have surrendered, or mostly
so, their franchise in this respect have paid no small penalty.
The real drawbacks of Anglo-Saxon lay elsewhere.
In the first place, there was the large prevalence of the
termination m, the ugliness of which Quintilian had
admitted 2 and bewailed in Latin, centuries earlier. It
has for some of us too much of the language of Mr.
Cophagus, " um and so on." To some of us also, its
vowels are apt to be drowned and muffled into a chorus
of grunts by the consonants. But clear pronunciation
can conquer this, as it (too rarely) does with well-bred,
well-educated, and not phonetically given speakers of
English to-day.

1 In The Dark Ages' (Periods of European Literature) (Edinburgh and
London, 1904). 2 Inst. Orat. xn. x. 33.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 13

The most important characteristic of Old English, its " syn-
however, from our present point of view or the most character,
important next to its power of composition was one,
the exact operation of which, from that point of view,
might seem rather doubtful. This was the fact that the
language was what is (not too " inevitably ") called a
" synthetic " one that is to say, one furnished with
pretty full declensions and conjugations of the principal
parts of speech. The direct effect of this might at first
sight seem likely to be favourable to variety and con-
cinnity of rhythmical arrangement.; inasmuch as, in such
a language, the actual order of words in the clause is
almost unlimited by any consideration of putting together
in place those which are to go together in sense. It is
doubtful, however, whether this is not counter -worked
by some other and less obvious consequences of the
synthetic condition. In such languages there is a
tendency universally observable, if not quite so positively
" natural " as some have thought to shift the verb to
the end of the sentence ; and this in its turn begets a
monotony of sentence-rhythm. Moreover, the periodic
sentence is much encouraged by the conveniences of such
accidence, and the periodic sentence is much more un-
likely to attain the finest effect of symphonic arrangement
than the cumulative.

Lastly, there is what should be the well-known fact intermixture
that the connection between Anglo-Saxon prose and ^ e p ^ s s a t ic le and
Anglo-Saxon poetry is extraordinarily close. There was
a time when students of this poetry had hardly recognised
that it was verse at all. There was another, at the time
of the production of the literature itself, when writers of
prose made it, with alliteration and balanced accent,
look as much like their own verse as possible. In fact,
there is hardly a language in which prose-poetry claims
such a definite division or department as in Old English :
there is certainly none in which the instruments of the
two harmonies are so nearly identical, and in which,
consequently, the products slide and grade off into one
another so easily and undistinguishably. There is no

14 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

metre in the poetry, 1 and there is a very fair amount of
rhythm in the prose. Mechanically, the more regular
recurrence of the centre break (which itself might be
little noticed in some cases without the centre dot) is
the only mark of division. In diction there is indeed
something more : the peculiar metaphors and other
unfamiliar turns of phrase appearing in the verse but
not in the purer prose. Yet these very things do, as
has been said, appear in the ornater specimens of that
division.

It will be observed by all, and I have no doubt
objected by many, that in these remarks I have taken no
account of modern theories as to the pronunciation of Old
English and its supposed differences from Middle and
Modern. I do not know that such notice could in strict-
ness be required of me, whatever my own ideas on the
subject were. 2 For relativity of rhythm, generally if not t
universally, remains the same whatever the individual
values may be ; or is affected only by intonation, on
which hardly even the maddest phonologist will dogmatise
too confidently in the case of ancient languages. It may
be that, as I believe they say, an oak was an " ark "
(without the r roll) in Alfred's time, and an " awk " (with
acorns for eggs) in Chaucer's. It may also have been an
" aik," as it was till lately in Scotland, or an " ike," as it
is in Germany, or an " ock," as some of the place-names

1 This statement has been called "startling"; but it will certainly not
startle those who are acquainted in any way with the History of English
Prosody to which this is a sequel ; and I should not have thought that many
others, even if they hold prosodic views different from mine, would object
to it. "Metre" is used, of course, in the full classical sense in which
Aristotle made his antithesis.

2 I had at first put them somewhat more fully ; but there is no room here
for partially irrelevant polemics. I shall only say that not, I think, from
that "ignorance" which it is the rather facile wont of phoneticians and
spelling-reformers to impute to their adversaries, but after much study of the
subject I hold (a) that we have very slight and scrappy knowledge of our
ancestors' pronunciation at any time ; (l>) that even if an absolute standard of
contemporary pronunciation could be reached, it is quite intolerable that any
particular generation should deform or destroy the historical continuity of the
written language, in order to inflict that pronunciation on its successors ;
(c) that dead languages can be best enjoyed as literature when they are
pronounced by each nation as it pronounces its own living language.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 15

they quote show, or an " ack," as perhaps some others do. 1
But no one of these different values will really affect
much, if at all, the rhythm of a sentence in which this
polyonymous tree occurs.

Of phonetics, then, no more now, or for ever, as far as
this book is concerned.

One other consideration of a general kind, and we Latin
may pass to the actual survey of the facts, and to such m
consideration of former views of them as may seem absol-
utely necessary. It is quite certain that, however early we
may place such specimens of Anglo-Saxon prose as we
possess, these represent a period when Latin 2 culture of
some kind was already open to, and in some degree had
been enjoyed by, the writers. Now it so happens that
Lower Latin (the authors in which naturally exerted
greater influence than the " Classics " proper) had de-
veloped a strongly rhetorical tinge which is noticeable
even in writers like Symmachus, much more in Martianus
Capella, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Venantius Fortunatus.
This tendency to " fireworks " seems to have been caught
and exaggerated by the barbarian nations who came under
Latin influence ; and in some Anglo-Saxon writings, such
as the Blickling Homilies, it is sometimes very distinctly
perceptible, while rhetorical teaching in the technical
sense was largely used and always included attention to
rhythm. In fact, bombastic diction and artificial arrange-
ment crept into the very charters themselves, where
nothing could be less appropriate. But enough of these
generalities.

It is proverbially difficult to begin ; but the difficulty Passages for
is multiplied, in a case like the present, by a consideration examinatlon -
which has not always presented itself to writers on such

1 The " ock " and " ack " may have, on the principle that Orm has made
famous, short vowel-va.\nes as against the long ones of the others. But this
will not much alter their rhythmical effect, which is the same in " Ockh&m. "
as in " Oakh&m."

2 There appears to be also some reason for thinking that Greek was on
the whole more known in the "Dark" Ages than in the "Middle"; but
this, though it should be kept in mind, is not sufficiently defined as a fact to
enable us to take very positive estimates of the extent and nature of Greek
influence.

16 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Ethelbald's
grant to the
Bishop of
Worcester.

subjects as clearly as it should have. A document such
as the famous account of the murder of King Cynewulf,
which will be commented on presently, may refer to an
event certainly of the eighth century no matter for the
exact year. But if we only have it in a MS. at
oldest of the very end of the ninth, what confidence can
we place in it as a monument of pure eighth-century
prose ? Still more, if this MS. is the earliest trustworthy
one of the Chronicle, can the brief but fairly composed
entries of the fifth, sixth, seventh, claim such confidence ?
We might as well say that the short account of the birth
of Christ and the visit of the Magi was written, in Anglo-
Saxon as we have it, a few months later than the event when
the news came to Britain. However, it may be admitted
that this doubt applies less, or not at all, to documents
of a definitely " diplomatic " kind such as the again
famous grant of remission of London port-dues on two
ships to the Bishop and Chapter of Worcester. The
text and translation, as close as possible to words and
order, may be given, following, in selection, Prof. Earle x
and others for text, but modern-Englishing, with the words
picked and the order kept as near as possible to the
original, for ourselves.

In usses dryhtnes noman
haelendes Cristes ic AeSelbald
Myrcna cincg waes beden from
baem arfullan bisceope Milrede
paett ic him alefde and his baem
halegan hirede alle nedbade
tuegra sceopa be baerto lim-
pende beoS bett ic him forgefe
ba baem eadigan Petre apostola
aldormen in baem mynstre beo-
wiaS baet is geseted in Huicca
maegSe in baere stowe be mon
hateS Weogernacester. paere

In our Lord's name, the
Saviour Christ, I Ethelbald of
Mercians king, was bidden
\j>rayed~\ by the pious bishop Mil-
rede that I to him leave [remz't]
and to his holy herd [society}
all need-bids [forced charges^ on
two ships thereto belonging that
are that I forgive it to those
that the blessed Peter, alderman
of the apostles, in the minster
serve, that is seated in Hwicca
country, in the stow that men

1 Who prints both. The charter may also be found in Thorpe's
Diplomatarium Anglo - Saxonicum (London, 1865), pp. 28, 29, usefully
preceded by other Latin documents of the same kind and tenor, which no
doubt were patterns in form, but in no wise prescribe order or rhythm.
The " Slaying of Cynewulf" occurs, of course, in any edition of the Chronicle,
anno 755.

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

bene swySe arfulle geSafunge ic
waes syllende for minre sawle
laecedome to Son ]?aett for minum
synnum hi heo geeaSmedden
Jjaette heo waeren gelomlice bin-
geras wi<5 drihten. SwySe lust-
fullice ba forgeofende ic him
alyfde alle nedbade tuegra sceopa
ba be baer abaedde beoS from
baem nedbaderum in Lunden-
tunes hy<5e ond naefre ic ne
mine lastweardas ne Sa nedbad-
eras geSristlaecen bat heo hit
onwenden o59e bon wiSgaen.
Gif heo bat nyllen syn heo bonne
amansumade from daelneo-
mencge liceman and blodes usses
drihtnes haelendes Cristes and
from alre neweste geleafulra syn
heo asceadene and asyndrade
nymSe heo hit her mid bingonge
bote gebete. A Handbook to the
Land Charters, etc., by J. Earle
(Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 42.

And ba ongeat se cyning baet,
and he on ba duru code, and ba
unheanlice hine werede, ob he
on bone aebeling locude, and ba
utraesde on hine, and hine mic-
lum gewundode. And hie alle
on bone cyning wserun feohtende
ob baet hie hine ofslasgenne haef-
don. And ba on baes wifes gebse-
rum onfundon baes cyninges beg-
nas ba unstilnesse, and ba J>ider
urnon swa hwelc swa J>onne gearo
wear]? and radost ; and hiera se
as]?eling gehwelcum feoh and
feorh gebead, and hiera naenig
hit ge]?icgean nolde : ac hie
simle feohtende waeran o}> hie
alle lasgon butan anum Bryttis-

hight Worcester. To this bene
[" prayer " as in Wordsworth] a
very gracious consent I was sell-
ing [/ gave\ for my soul's leech-
dom, to the end that for my
sins they might condescend that
they should be frequent thingers
[" persons who address a thing
or judicial assembly " " advo-
cates "] with the Lord. Very lust-
fully \_gladly\ then forgiving I
have left \remitted\ them all
need - bids \imposts\ on two
ships, which there bidden be by
need - bidders [" collectors "] in
London town-hithe. And never
I nor my last-comers [successors]
nor the need-bidders [shall] pre-
sume that they it undo or go
against it. If they nill this, be
they therefore excommunicated
from deal-nimming [partaking]
of the body and blood of our
Lord Saviour Christ, and from all
society of believers be they shed
[severed] and sundered, unless
they it here with thinging boot
[penance made after application
for forgiveness to a lawful
authority] make atonement.

And then perceived the king The ' ' Slaying
that ; and he to the door yode, of Cynewulf. '
and there in no paltry fashion
warded himself, till he on the
atheling looked, and then out-
rushed him and him mickle
wounded. And they all on
the king were righting till that
they him offslain had. And
then on the woman's outcries,
on-found this king's thanes the
unstillness ; and then thither ran,
just as yare was and readiest.
And the atheling each of them
fee and life bid ; and none of
them take it would ; but they
always fighting were till they all
lay [dead], but one British
C

1 8 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

cum gisle, and se swi]?e gewun-
dadwaes. Da on morgenne gehier-
dun J>aet J>ass cyninges J?egnas J>e
him be aeftan wasrun J>ast se
cyning ofslaegen waes, ]?a ridon
hie ]?ider, and his aldormon
Osric, and WiferJ) his J>egn, and
J>a men J>e he be aeftan him
laefde aer, and J>one sej>eling on
J>aare byrig metton }?aer se cyning
ofslaegen laeg, and J?a gatu him
to belocen haefdon and J>a ]?aer to
eodon ; and J>a gebead he him
hiera agenne dom feos and londes
gif hie him J>aes rices u]?on, and
him cyj>don J>aet hiera maegas
him mid waeron ]?a Je him from
noldon ;

and ]>a cuasdon hie ]?aet him
naenig maeg leofra naere }>onne
hiera hlaford, and hie naefre
his banan folgian noldon ; and
Ja budon hie hiera maegum
J>ast hie gesunde from eodon ;
and hie cuasdon ]?ast taet ilce
hiera geferum geboden waere, J>e
aer mid ]?am cyninge wasrun ; J>a
cuaedon hie Ipset hie hie )?aes ne
onmunden }>on ma J?e eowre
geferan ]?e mid J>am cyninge
ofslaagene wasrun. And hie }>a
ymb ]?a gatu feohtende wasron
o]?}?3et hie }>aer inne fulgon, and
}>one aejieling ofslogon, and J>a
men J>e him mid wasrun alle
butan anum, se waes J>aes aldor
monnes god sunu.

I have adopted this style of translation, though con-
scious that it will irritate some people sorely, because it
would be impossible otherwise to indicate to that probably
not inconsiderable proportion of readers who cannot or
will not read Anglo-Saxon, something, and indeed a good
deal, of the tactical l and rhythmical character of the

1 I.e. not " jj/wtactical " in the limited grammatical sense, but in matter of
arrangement of words.

hostage, and he much wounded
was.

When on the morning heard
that the king's thanes who after
\left behind] him were that the
king offslain was, then rode they
thither, and his alderman Osric,
and Wiferth his thane, and the
men whom he after him left ere
while. And the atheling in the
burg they met [found] where the
king offslain lay ; and the gates to
them they locked had ; and then
they yode to them. And then bid
he them their own doom [terms]
fees and lands if they him the
kingdom would grant : and he
let them couth that their kinsmen
him with were, and that they him
from nold \would not] go.

Then said they [the thanes]
that to them no kinsman w^s
nearer than their lord, and they
never his bane follow would.
And then they bid their kinsmen
that they sound from [away]
yede should, and they said that
that same to theirferes had bidden
been when they with the king
were ; they said that they this
not admitted more than your
feres that with the king offslain
were. And they then about the
gates fighting were until they
therein made [their way]; and the
atheling offslew and the men that
him with were, all but one who
was the alderman's god-son.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 19

language, and so to keep the balance true in respect of the
illustrative extracts throughout the book. 1

Now, any one who studies these passages with a Remarks-
moderate degree of attention will not, I think, have much effe ^ l t Cc
difficulty in agreeing, more or less, with the following inflections.
remarks on the phenomena. The first and most obvious
characteristic, as well as the most obvious point of difference
from modern and even from Middle English, is that the
presence of inflection determines the ordonnance of the
clause. The verb gravitates to the end ; the case has a
tendency to come before the preposition ; genitives and
other dependents are often split by the word on which
they depend.

One point of great and special as well as general Of com-
importance is the predilection of the language for com- ^ lds> etc-
pounds, even to express a single or at least a simple idea,
and the allied effect which particles and suffixes produce.
Thus we no longer say to " 0^slay," and though we still
say to " kill off" with a somewhat special meaning, we do
not say to " off kill." 2 We should still, if we used the same
verb, say that the thanes " found out " that the king was
dead, but we should not say that they " outfound " it,
and we should say the king " rushed out," but not " out-
rushed." Every one of these changes alters the rhythm.
Such a word, again, as unheanlic, though almost alone
in these particular extracts with " unstillness," represents

1 Incidentally, I hope it may also indicate to some how little difference or
difficulty there really is in Anglo-Saxon for a tolerably well-educated and
tolerably intelligent person a description the like of which seems strangely
to annoy some who perhaps do not recognise themselves in it. In the above
long extracts I do not think there are a score of words which are absolutely
obsolete, though there may be a few more of which the use has changed
or which are archaic. The mere disguise of spelling should be impenetrable
to no pretty fair wits. As to the language adopted it is necessarily somewhat
of the " Wardour Street " order. " Yede " as an infinitive, has been specially
objected to ; but I am content to have my lot in Spenser's bosom hereafter
(which indeed almost implies "Arthur's"). See Shep. Kal. July, 109, and
F. Q. I. xi. v. I. "Bid" and "bidden," as in bidding at a sale, "make
an offer."

2 "Offset" has survived, though only in competition with "set-off."
" Offsaddle " has come back to us through kindred Dutch ; and there are
other compounds (chiefly dialectic) of the kind. But in most if not all of
them it will be noted that the "off" has a more separate and additional sense
than in "offslay."

20 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

an immense body of Anglo-Saxon words which are, by
the prefix " un," altered in form and differently balanced
in shape ; and the omnipresent " ge " has the same effect.
The result of all this is that we find Old English provided,
in proportion, with fewer of the short monosyllables with
which the more modern tongue has been reproached, when
it does not avail itself of Romance synonyms. " Unstill-
ness " for " noise " alters the rhythm remarkably.

Of actual syntax, except as far as the analytic-synthetic
question comes in, it is not necessary to take much notice.
I think it was odd of Professor Earle to say that " this
syntax is not more rugged than that of Thucydides."
The " ruggedness " of Thucydidean syntax surely consists
in its constant subordination to the sense, which has
accordingly to be found out by a not always easy process
of interpretation before you can see what the syntax is.
But the sense in these passages is as clear as anything can
possibly be a slight confusion of demonstrative pronouns
(especially in the latter part of the " Slaying ") being
almost the only fault.

Um endings In one respect, which has been glanced at previously,
consonant both passages illustrate, though not very specially, the

groups, etc. , ,

ugly -urn endings, which, let it be remembered, are not in
any material degree beautified by pronouncing them -oom,
for the grunt remains. The language may also to some
ears not, I confess, to mine underlie the charge which
has persisted against its descendants, that it is " overladen
General w ^h consonants." l Its rhythmical capacities are not

word-rhythm. srn all ; it has already fallen into moulds which are still
recognisable, and in some respects it already possesses
instruments of harmony which, when language has ceased
to be inflected and has shed most of its prefixes, will have
to be supplied from alien sources. In particular, it is, by
the operation of the causes above discussed, well furnished
with those words of an amphibrachic character which Dante,
though he did not call them amphibrachs, recognised as

1 The charge, I think, rests altogether on a fallacy. If the predominance
of consonants "clogs," the predominance of vowels gives, as sometimes in
Italian, a monotonous flux which can be quite as teasing.

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

so important in the rhythm of his own language. 1 And,
again as in Italian, these and other words tend to convey
a general trochaic rhythm, which, of course, is equally and
more noticeable in the poetry of the time, but which has
beyond all doubt persisted in English prose more fully
than it has in English poetry.

In : usses | dryhtnes | noman | healendes | Cristes. 2 j

the very first note strikes it with a monosyllabic " catch "
(or an amphibrach) at the beginning and one dactylic
extension, as always with trochees, while if you start
iambically the rhythm breaks down in ugly fashion. So

We must, however, be careful, in considering, to dis- Remarks on
tinguish the characteristics of individual word-rhythm from of 6 t h e y
those of the completed clause or sentence. It is true that, composition,
as we shall find by experience, foot-division otherwise than
at the end of a word is much less frequent than it is in
verse ; so much so, that my friend the late Mr. R. L.
Stevenson had a notion 3 that you should not divide the
word at all in spacing prose rhythm. But this,flace tanti,
is certainly wrong. Foot-division at the end of a word is
or should be as much the rule in prose as it is or should
be the exception in verse. But, on the other hand, the
much greater compass and content of the prose foot
which may extend to five syllables at least groups words
in a fashion which to some extent merges, and to a very

1 Amore, difesa, etc.

2 This is perhaps the best place to explain the system of " quantification "
adopted in reference to A.S. It does not, of course, in the least pretend to
follow vowel quantity nor (v. sup. ) any presumed system of pronunciation ;
but is constructed on the principle which I believe to be essentially English
at'all periods, and to provide the very rhythmical differentia of the language

that of granting the power of length sometimes to stress (as in "noman"),
sometimes to position, and sometimes to other causes still.

3 Developed in a letter to me on my arrangement of a text from the
Canticles in the essay mentioned above (v. Preface).

22 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

great extent affects, their individual value. A strong
monosyllable following a trochee will make the end of the
foot iambic ; and so in more complicated cases, as will or
should be endlessly illustrated below.

Now, when we look at the rhythm of the passages
quoted, from the point of view of the larger integers, we
shall find traces of the infancy of prose style in that the
dominant word-rhythm echoes, with rare but not insufficient
exceptions, the dominant clause-rhythm. Thus in the
beginning of the grant it runs :

and so on ; where it will be observed that if cyning had
been put for cincg every line would have been trochaic or
dactylic in ending. Trochaic or dactylic rhythm continues
down to " Weogernacester " in fact, through the whole
piece. Except that there is only accidental alliteration the
whole thing might be a block of Anglo - Saxon verse,
neither very good nor very bad. 1
And its rela- This cannot quite be said of the other piece, though

tions to verse. ^ j Qoks exactly the kind of thing which WQuld be .

rhymed " according to a process frequent in very early
French prose 2 and exemplified in some of Malory's finest
work. The strong prose genius of the language has got
hold of this forerunner of Malory himself, and of many
a prose tale-teller since. It is true that, by a curious
accident, the opening words, modernised almost imper-
ceptibly, and keeping a dissyllabic form for " duru," give
a verse-rhythm familiar enough to us now in the history
of the more fortunate fortunes of another King, Cole :

And then | ongat | the cyjning that
And he | to the door [way yode.

1 If the similar Latin charters, above referred to, be examined, the rhythm
will be found quite different, and necessitating quite different measurement.

2 It is actually known to have occurred in some cases : and is believed on
good grounds to have given us Henri de Valenciennes' continuation of
Villehardouin.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 23

But this is not an Anglo-Saxon verse rhythm at all ; *
you do not get it till the Middle English blend has been
chemically and indissolubly compounded. The trochaic
under-hum is present ; but the heat of the narration to
some extent muffles it except at clause-ends ; and even
icre the result is often truncated or catalectic, as indeed
ancient critics had noticed in the case of their own
languages. How it comes out at the climax has been
noted already.

One other point, however, of remarkable interest and Absence of
importance, should be discussed before we pass from these a
two texts. Alliteration, which plays so important a part
in Anglo-Saxon verse, is here almost entirely absent. In
the charter you would not expect much, but there is
practically none such things as " halegan hirede " or
"syllende for minre sawle " being possibly accidental, and,
at any rate, of no rhythmical pertinence. In the story of
the king's death it would be much more in place, and
a later writer of the time and taste of ^Elfric would not
dream of omitting it. Here you may almost say that
the writer, consciously or unconsciously, has gone out of
his way to avoid it. Except " feoh " and " feorh," an
undoubtedly proverbial phrase or catch-word, which is
not repeated as it might be lower down, there is hardly
a single instance of even casual alliteration in the piece.

Very much the same characteristics, reinforced, Alfred's
perhaps, to some extent by the constant presence or translatlons -
nearness, in translation, of Latin, appear in the work by,
or attributed to, Alfred. But in the originally contributed
pieces there is something more like alliteration and
verse-rhythm generally, besides the trochaic dominant.
Yet even here there is not really much. In the well-
known narrative of Othere we come across things like
" NorSmanna norSmest," " stowum sticcemaelum," " fyrrest
faraS," " fisceran and fugeleran," but they are by no
means very numerous, and it is impossible to say that

1 Attempts have been made to trace " nursery rhymes " to Anglo-Saxon
rhythms of verse. But, if I know anything about any prosody, they are quite
mistaken.

24 A HISTOR Y OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

they constitute a distinct feature of the style. The
companion report of Wulfstan has even fewer. In
passages of pure translation the run of the Latin sentence
is very commonly kept ; and any alliteration that appears
is more or less fortuitous. There may seem, for instance,
to be some in this from the account of the death of
Cyrus : " hi up-forlet on feower hund ea and on syxtig
ea ; and sySSan mid his fyrde Jjaer-ofer for," but on
reading it it will be seen that the repeated fs are little
noticed and affect the rhythm hardly at all. Still there
is more alliteration, as in the story of Orpheus from the
Boethius. It may be worth while here to give the Anglo-
Saxon with translation as before, the original Latin, and
Chaucer's version parallel, that they may be useful for
reference later. Not much comment is needed here,
except the (perhaps obvious) caution that Alfred's is not
a translation but a very free paraphrase.

ALFRED. {Literally translated.)

Da ongann monn secgan be Then began men to say of the

|?am hearpere, ]?aet he mihte harper, that he might harp [so]

hearpian Jaet se wudu wagode, that the woods wagged and the

and Ja stdnas hi styredon for stones stirred themselves for the

bam swege, and wild-deor J>aer sound, and the wild -deer there

woldan to-irnan and standan, would to-run and stand as they

swilce hi tame wasron, swa stille, tame were, so still that though

]?eah hi men o65e hundas wiS they with men or hounds yode,

eodon, bast hi hi na ne onscune- they did not onscunner x them,

don. Da saedon hi baet Sass Then said they that this harper's

hearperes wif sceolde acwelan, wife should quail and her soul

and hire sawle mon sceolde man should lead to hell. Then

laedan to helle. Da sceolde se should the harper become so

hearpere weorban swa sarig, bset sorry that he not might in among

he ne mihte on gemong oSrum other men be, and drew to

mannum bion, ac teah to wuda, woods and sat on the mountains,

and sast on bam muntum, aegber whether by day or night, and

ge daeges ge nihtes, weop and wept and harped, so that the

hearpode, baet ba wudas bifodon, woods trembled and the waters

and ba ea stodon, and nan heort stood, and no hart onstunnered

ne onscunode nasnne Icon, ne any lion, nor no hare any hound,

naii hara naenne hund, ne nan nor no neat ne wist any hatred

1 I have chosen this northern form for "scunian" instead of "shun,"
because it keeps the rhythm better, and also preserves the sense of " loathing,"
in addition to that of mere " avoidance."

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

nor any fear of others, for the
mirth of this sound. 1

BOETHIUS.

Quondam funera conjugis
Vates Threicius gemens,
Postquam flebilibus modis
Silvas currere, mobiles
Amnes stare coegerat,
Junxitque intrepidum latus
Saevis cerva leonibus,
Nee visum timuit lepus
Jam cantu placidum canem.

neat nyste naenne andan ne
naenne ege to oSrum, for J?aere
mirh]?e bass sones.

CHAUCER.

The poete of Trace (Orpheus),
that whilome hadde ryght greet
sorwe for the deth of his wyf,
aftir that he hadde makid by his
weeply songes the wodes moev-
able to renne, and hadde makid
the ryveris to stonden stille, and
hadde maked the hertes and the
hyndes to joynen dreedles here
sydes to cruel lyouns (for to
herknen his song), and hadde
maked that the hare was nat
agast of the hound, whiche was
plesed by his song.

When, however, we pass from the ninth century to the The tenth
tenth, remarkable changes and developments are dis- ce
covered. Unfortunately, the study of these is beset by
all sorts of difficulties. The exact relation of date of
MSS. to date of composition seems often impossible to
discover. For instance, we know that 971 is a " fixture "
of some sort in reference to the Blickling Homilies, but
whether it is " date of writing " in one sense, or " date of
writing" in another, we do not seem to know. Further,
the editors of the texts (to whom we owe, of course,
infinite thanks) have very rarely paid the least or more
than the least attention to literary points. The Germans
do not often touch at all on this side of the matter, and
perhaps it is as well that they do not. Thorpe, J. M.
Kemble (who surely would have had something to say),
and other earlier scholars say little or nothing. Professor
Skeat, as for instance in the final words on his completion
of ^Elfric's Homilies, seems to have designedly cut his
remarks down to the lowest point. Professor Napier's
long-promised edition of further texts in completion of

1 This is a good opportunity for the reader to notice the constant sub-
stitution, in modern English, of an abrupt termination for a trochaically
modulated one in all the infinitives, in "woods" for "wudu," in "stones"
for "stanas."

26 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Morris, Thorpe, and Skeat has never appeared. One has
therefore to do what one can unassisted.

The Blickiing The very first page of the Blickling collection 1 shows
us that we have before us a writer or a group of writers
(the authorship is, I believe, utterly unknown, and if I
am any judge of style it was certainly not JElfric in any
case) who knows the rhetorical ropes, who has a definite
bag of stylistic tricks to draw upon. There is not much
alliteration, which of itself would almost exclude ^Elfric.
But there is a tendency, much stronger than in earlier
writers, to antithetic balance in the sentence.

Maria cende ["kindled," as we still say of cats] }>onne Drihten
on blisse ; Eua cende ]mrh firen \sinf ul\ lust.

Now this (of course most common) opposition of Mary
and Eve is kept up, sometimes by actual use of the same
words at the clause-ends, for several sentences. And it is
most curious to mark how this antithetic arrangement,
although the trochaic words blisse, cende, Drihten, etc.
continue, sets up, as it always does, a general iambic
drift ; the combative tendency of the iamb manifesting
itself. But we have not long to wait for the more flowery
variety. The close of the Archangel's address to Our
Lady, which Dr. Morris partly quotes in his brief intro-
duction, has almost all the accomplishment of the verse
arrangement of the Authorised Version :

Wes bu hal, Maria, geofena ful ; Drihten is mid be, on binre
heortan & on binum innobe, & eac on binuw fultome. Ac blissa bu,
faemne, forSon be Crist of heofona heanessum & of baem engelicum
brymmum on binne innob astigeb ; and he hine to bon geeabmedeb
b<^/ he of his }?asm federlican sedate be him to meder.

There is a flaw in the MS. at the close of the sentence.
But the probable whole may be Englished :

Wassail to thee ) , , , , , T , . ... .,

T> L -i j > Mary of graces full : the Lord is with thee in

Be thou hailed I

thy heart and in thy womb, and eke in thine assistance. But joy
thyself, maiden, for that the Christ from heaven's highnesses, and
from the glories of the angels, into thy womb shall descend ; and he

1 Ed. Morris, E.E.T.S. (London, 1880).

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 27

shall thus condescend him that from the bosom of his father
[coming ?] he thee to mother [shall take ?].

And later :

Seo readnes Jjaere rosan lixe]? on J>e, & seo hwftnes J?aere lilian
scinej) on >e, & mid eallum missenlicuw afedduw blostmum sy se
Cristes brydbur gefraetwod.

The redness of the rose glitters in thee, and the whiteness of the
lily shineth in thee, and with all mingling of flowers that blow be
Christ's bride-bower befretworked.

It is true that we have some evidence here of the
earliness of our stage, for, as it happens, the preceding
sentence has concluded with the same word gefrcetwod
a serious blemish, though the word is excellent in itself.
But one does not want a faultless precocity. Very inter-
esting too is the special passage which Dr. Morris indicated
as perhaps based on Beowulf ^ and as affording a key to a
corrupt phrasing there. It is (though he did not say so)
also obviously connected with the famous Vision of St.
Paul one of the oldest specimens of hagiology, and in a
way a distinct precursor of Romance. Here it is with a
translation (mine, not his) :

Swa Sanctus Paulus wass As S. Paul was seeing towards

geseonde on norSanweardne Jnsne the northward of the middle

middangeard, J?asr ealle waetero earth, where all waters pass

niSergewitaS, & he ]?aer geseah away down, he there saw, over

ofer Saem waetere sumne harne the waters, a hoary stone ; and

stdn ; & wseron norS of Saem there were north of the stone

stdne awexene swiSe hrimige waxen very rimy woods, and

bearwas, 1 & Saer wseron ]?ystro- there were mists of darkness, and

genipo, & under ]?aem stalne wass under the stone was the dwell-

niccra eardung & wearga. & he ing of nicors and cursed things,

geseah ]?aet on Saem clife hang- And he saw that on the cliff there

odan on Saem isgean bearwum hanged on the icy woods many

manige swearte saula be heora swart souls by their hands y-

handum gebundne ; & }?a fynd binded ; and the fiends there

J>ara on nicra onlicnesse heora in nicor's on-likeness on them

gripende waeron, swa swa grzedig gripping were just like a greedy

wulf ; & \<zt waeter wees sweart wolf ; and the water was swart

under Ipsem clife neoSan. & betuh under the cliff beneath. And

]?aem clife on Saew waetre waeron betwixt the cliff and the water

1 In the Beowulf passage (2731) " hrinde bearwas," " barky [?] groves,"
had been read.

28 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

swylce twelf mfla, & Sonne 5a were some twelve miles, and

twigo forburston )>onne gewitan when the twigs forbursted then

J>a saula niSer J?a J?e on Sasm went the souls nether [wards]

twigum hangodan, & him on- that on the twigs hanged, and

fengon Sa nicras. them on-catched the nicors.

The single phrase " hrimige bearwas " (and perhaps the
" nicors " who, though not in the actual context of Beowulf,
are not far off) may be a reminiscence of the old epic,
but it is clear that the whole passage was not composed
under the influence of that or any other alliterative verse
place as far as form goes. The imagery of poetical land-
scape of the gloomy kind is somewhat stock. But the thing
has undergone a complete transformation. Even where
there is alliteration, and more, cross-alliteration, as in
the " swaerte saula be heora handum " and " gripende
waeron swa swa gratdig wulf," it is not poetically arranged.
So in another passage on the birth of St. John Baptist :

& he aer to heofonum becom asr]?on Ipe he eorj>an aethrine, & J?aer
Halgum Gaste onfeng aer]?on J>e he menniscne haefde ; }?am god-
cundum gifum he ger onfeng, aerjwn J>e he mennisc lif haefde ; & he
ongan lifgean ongean God, sermon J>e he him sylfum lifgean mihte ;
swa Sanctus Paulus se apostol cwae]?, " Ne lybbe ic, ac Crist leofa}?."

Now such echo of Anglo-Saxon verse rhythm as I
at least have in my ears does not enable me to hear,
despite the abundance of vowel-, the presence of con-
sonant-alliteration and the usual trochaic run, any close
approach to the general tune of that poetry.

But perhaps the most interesting part of this inter-
esting book for our purpose is the " St. Andrew," which
of course directly suggests comparisons with the poem
attributed to Cynewulf. The original legend (which must
have been Greek-Eastern) is full of poetical inspiration,
and thus maintains itself very fairly in the various forms
verse and prose, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English
which we have. The Homily, however, has no room for
the poetical detail, but it might, as we found in other cases,
have kept traces of poetical form. Here I can find none
the Blickling man may or may not have known
Andreas, which was pretty certainly older by a good deal ;

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

but no fraction stuck in his mind, whether the other one
of Beowulf did or not. The torture-scene by dragging
occurs in both ; and if the circumstances are slightly
different, the differences of the manner are not slight, but
absolutely those of prose and verse. Let any one, with
however little or however much knowledge of Anglo-
Saxon, compare the passages, in the first case with, in the
second without, the translations and see for himself.

Hetow ]?a laedan
ofer landsceare,
]?rasgmaslum teon,

torngeniS Ian,
swa hie hit frecnost
finden meahton ;
drogon deormode
sefter dun scraefum

ymb stanhleoSo

waes J>aes halgan lie
sarbennum soden,
swate bestemed,
ban hus abrocen,
blod y5um weoll
hat of heolfre.

And Ipa. call J>ast folc ]?aet
gehierde, hit him licode, and
hraSe hie sendon rap on his
sweoran, and hie hine tugon
geond J>aere ceastre lanan. Mid
YI J>e se eadiga Andreas waes
togen his lichama waes gemenged
mid J>aere eorSan, swa baet blod
fleow ofer eorSan sw waeter.

Then might [bid] they lead him
Over the land-shares,
Time-meal [at intervals'] to tow

him

The angry enemies,
As they it most frackly
Find might.

They dragged him damagingly
Through the down- [mountain]

caves

Around the stone cliffs
[Also through roads and streets^
Was the saint's body
With sore-wounds sodden,
With blood besteamed,
The bone-house broken,
The blood in waves welled,
Hot with gore.

And when all the folk that
heard, it liked them ; and rathely
they sent a rope on his swire
\?ieck~\, and they him tugged
around the cester's lanes. While
that the holy Andrew was tugged,
his body was mingled with the
earth, so that his blood flowed
over the earth like water.

Thus, at this very early date, Anglo-Saxon was interim
already provided with what Victor Hugo (showing at the pr
same time his ignorance of English, by denying it to our /Eifric.
language while asserting it for French) postulated, and
rightly so, as the main differentia of a finished literary
tongue the existence of distinct styles for prose and
verse. Thus did our English, in almost its earliest form,

30 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

anathematise, condemn, and antiquate by anticipation the
Wordsworthian heresy as to the identity of the two.
Moreover, which is our special business, the prose form in
the Chronicle, in Alfred, and in the Blickling man or men
is, though of no great elaborateness or periodic com-
plexity, very far from rudimentary or childish. It is, in
fact, much more symphonically accomplished, and less
" thought out in pellets," than some latish Middle English
prose at the end of the fourteenth century. It owed, no
doubt, a good deal to Latin, of which so much in these
very Homilies was to some extent a direct imitation or
paraphrase ; and the fact of this following, with the
inferiority of the imitating language in demonstratives,
etc., led to some confusion. But it was assisted by its
inflections, and though, as already pointed out, the
trochaic run continued, it has succeeded in forging for
itself a fair prose cadence already.

There were some, however, who were not satisfied
with this, and among them was perhaps the most
accomplished writer of Anglo-Saxon prose at any time
certainly the Anglo-Saxon prose writer of widest learn-
ing and most ambitious tentative yElfric. So to him
let us turn.

/Eifric the With regard to the well-known, interesting, and in

Colloquy. f act positively amusing Colloquy * a conversation between
a monastic schoolmaster and the boys and servants of
the community there are two little difficulties in our
way. One is the fact that it was certainly auctum (a
word susceptible of very many meanings) by his pupil
and namesake ^Elfric Bata ; the second is that there is
some doubt whether the Anglo-Saxon version, which
alone interests us, is original. But in one form of the
title, Bata is made, in his own person, to say that his
master composed it, and he only added multas appendices ;
while the whole point of the hand-book seems to necessi-
tate a vernacular interpretation, whether written before-

1 A " Hamiltonian " word-for-word doublet in Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
Most conveniently found in Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica (new
edition, London, 1868), p. 1 8.

n OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 31

hand, or made at the time of teaching, and embodied
afterwards. Nor would it, I think, be easy for any
person, pretty widely practised in translation, to be
positive which version was written first. The word-order
is not more that of one language than that of the other ;
or, if there is any difference, it seems rather to incline to
the vernacular. 1 At any rate, this vernacular itself is
straightforward, but fairly polished, ordinary language
with nothing of " talking-book " about it. If ^Elfric
wrote it his learning had in no way " sicklied " his English ;
nor had it infected him with any love of " inkhorn terms "
for their own sake.

In his regular literary work, however, and especially The Homilies.
in his famous and extensive Homilies? something quite
different meets us something indeed which has not yet
precisely united critical judgments as to its exact nature.
His earliest editor naturally printed them as prose :
naturally, but we must remember that it was not at first
that any Anglo-Saxon composition (from the fact of all
being written straight on) was discovered to be verse.
But later editors have printed large quantities as
verse, though admitting that it is a kind of verse appar-
ently of ^Elfric's own invention. And some readers, not
merely lazily taking the easy via media, have regarded
none of it as exactly verse, but a great deal of it as
elaborately rhythmed prose, something like Ossian or
Blake. Let us take some specimens.

THE CENTURION (Thorpe, i. 126)

PCS hundredes ealdor genea- The hundred's elder drew Specimen

laehte Sam Haelende na healf- nigh to the Healer, not halflings passages,

unga, ac fulfremedlice. He but full-framedly. He drew nigh

genealaehte mid micclum ge- with mickle belief, and with

leafan, and mid soSre eadmod- soothful humility and wisdom,

1 Mr. Cockayne (Preface to Anglo-Saxon Leecfidoms) whom, as I mention
elsewhere, I am specially bound to respect, and who knew infinitely more
Anglo-Saxon than I do, thought the translation later and a mere "crib."
But I speak as a critic, not as a linguist.

2 Partly published by Thorpe (London, 1844) in the very desirable and
beautifully printed issues of the yElfric Society, which also contain Kemble's
Vercelli MS., Solomon and Satumus, and other things. Completed by Skeat,
E.E.T.S. (London, 1890 and 1900).

32 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

nysse, and snotornysse, and
soSre lufe. Micelne geleafan he
haefde, pa]?a he cwaeS, " Drihten,
cweS J>in word, and min cniht
biS hal." SoSHce he geswute-
lode micele eadmodnysse, mid
pam Se he cwaeS, " Drihten, ne
com ic wyrSe paet ]>u innfare
under mine Secene." He haefde
micele snotornysse, Ipalpa. he
understod paat Crist is aeghwaer
andweard Jmrh godcundnysse,
seSe lichamlice betwux mannum
gesewenlic code.

and soothful love. Much belief
he had in that he quoth, " Lord !
speak thy word, and my knight
shall be whole." Soothly he
manifested mickle humility in
this, that he said, " Lord, not am
I worthy that thou infare under
my thatch." He had mickle
wisdom in that he understood
that Christ is eachwhere present :
through his god-kindness 1 he
who once bodily betwixt men
seeably yode.

DIVES AND LAZARUS (ibid. i. 330)

Sume beladunge mihte se rica
habban his uncyste, gif se reoflia
waedla ne lasge aetforan his
gesihSe : eac waere Sam earman
leohtre on mode, gif he Saes
rican mannes welan ne gesawe.
Mislice angsumnyssa he forbaer,
SaSa he naefde ne bigleofan, ne
haelSe, ne haetera, and geseah
Sone rican halne and deorweor-
Slice geglencgedne brucan his

estmettas. Genoh waere | }>am
waedlan | his untrumnys, || J>eah
Se | he wiste | haefde ; || and eft
him | waere genoh | his hafen-
least, | Seah Se | he gesundful |
waere. || Ac seo | menigfealde |
earfoSnys | waes his sawle |

:=: ^ :r ^

claensungj and Saes rican | un-

Some letting-off might the rich
man have for his uncostliness, 2
if the leprous beggar had not
lain before his sight. Eke were
it to the poor man lighter in his
mood if he the rich man's wealth
had not seen. Mingled angsome-
nesses h^e bare in that he had
neither victuals, nor health, nor
garments ; and saw the rich
man hale and dearworthly be-
dizened, 3 brook [enjoy, make use
of] his feast -meats. Enough
were to the beggar hisuntrimness,
though he food had ; and again
to him were enough his have-
lessness though that he soundful
were. But the manifold hard-
ship was his soul's cleansing ;
and the rich man's uncost and up-
a-heavedness were his degrada-
tion ; for that he saw the other's
misery, and him with puffed-up
mind look down on. But when

1 Divine nature.

2 Stinginess, parsimony. "Cyst" is of course "choice," not strictly
"cost," but it is used in the sense of "generosity."

3 I had wished to translate this "glancing," with the special sense of the
German gZanzend. But I find the philologists disinclined to admit connection
between this group and "glengcan." Now it is wrong to hurt even a philo-
logist's feelings, unless it is a matter of principle. And "bedizened" comes
nearer the rhythm.

OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

cyst and | up-ahefednys | waes
his | geniSerung : || forSon | Se he
geseah j Saes oSres | yrm.Se, ||
and hine | mid toSundenum |

mode | forseah. | l Ac SaSa he
wass fram mannum forsewen, Sa
genealashton Sa hundas, and his
wunda geliccedon. Hundes lic-
cung gehaelS wunda.

he was of men despised, then
drew nigh the hounds and his
wounds licked. Hounds' licking
heals wounds.

ST. CUTHBERT (Thorpe, ii. 138)

PCS foresgeda halga wer waes
gewunod baet he wolde gan on
niht to see, and standan on Sam
sealtan brymme oS his swyran,
syngende his gebedu. pa on
sumere nihte hlosnode sum oSer
munuc his faereldes, and mid
sleaccre stalcunge his fotswaSum
filigde, oSbaet hi begen to see
becomon. Da dyde CuSberhtus
swa his gevvuna waas, sang his
gebedu on seelicere ySe, standende
oS bone swyran, and sySSan his
cneowa on Sam ceosle gebigde,
astrehtum handbredum to heofen-
licum rodore. Efne Sa comon
twegen seolas of SEelicum grunde,
and hi mid heora flyse his fet
drygdon, and mid heora blaede
his leoma beSedon, and siSSan
mid gebeacne his bletsunge
bsedon, licgende ast his foton on
fealwum ceosle.

The aforesaid holy man was
wonted that he would go at night
to the sea, and stand on the salt
brim up to his swire \neck\ sing-
ing his beads. Then on a certain
night waited another monk his
faring ; and with slack stalking
his footswathes followed till that
they both to sea came. Then
did Cuthbert as his wont was ;
sang his beads in the sea-like
ooze, standing up to the swire,
and sithence his knees on the
chesil 2 bowed, with outstretched
handbreadths to the heavenly
firmament. Lo ! then came
twey seals from the sea-ground,
and they with their flix 8 his
feet dried, and with their breath
his limbs warmed, and sithence
withbeckonings his blessing bade,
lying at his feet on the fallow
chesil.

1 On the principles of quantification adopted, v. sup. p. 21, note 2. They
may cause horrification of friends and scorn of foes ; but they are not so un-
reasonable as they look. For instance, both e's of "hefed" may be techni-
cally short ; but nothing shall persuade me that any English mouth ever got
through "up-ahefednys" without a stress. Nor is there any other syllable
for this than " hef." I have, however, in several places, given the alternative
= to show knowledge of the orthodox vowel-value.

2 " Shingle," as in the Chesil Beach at Portland.

3 Used by Dryden for a hare's fur.

34 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

ST. THOMAS (Skeat, iv. 408)

y^fter J>ysum wordum he efste After these words he hastened to

to ]?am cwearterne . the quarter [prison]

And ge-sohte ]?one apostol sec- And sought the Apostle, saying

gende mid wope , with weeping :

" Min bro]?or nyste leof ]?aet J>u " My brother wist not, dear one,

Jjaes lifigendan godes . that thou of the living God

Apostol waere . and he haefS Apostle were, and he hath highly

healice agylt" . sinned."

He un-band hine sona . and baed He unbound him soon ; and

J>aet he under-fenge begged that he would take

DeorwurSe gyrlan . ])a. cwae<5 Dearworth garments. Then said

drihtnes J>egen . the Lord's thane :

" Git J?u nast J?aet ne weriaS " Yet thou wist not that not

wuldorfulle gyrlan wear they glorious garments

Ne flaesclice fraetewunga J>a J>e Nor fleshly fretwork, those that

folgiaS criste . follow Christ,

And gewilniaS to haebbenne J>a And will them to have the

heofonlican mihta . heavenly mights.

PCS pallium J>e ic werige wyle This pallium that I wear 'will

me gelaestan . me last out

And min syric ne tosihS . ne mine And my sark will not to-spoil,

sceos ne to-baerstaS . nor my shoes to-burst,

./Er J?an }?e min sawl siSaS of Ere that my soul goeth from the

J>am lichaman." body."

Now these four pieces give, I believe, fair presentations,
and as many as we can afford here, of ^Ifric's various and
most remarkable fashions of handling his native language
in prose.

Remarks The first is prose pure and simple. It is possible, of
on them. course it is so in all prose of all languages, to break up
some of the clauses and sentences into something like
Anglo-Saxon half-staves ; but never continuously, and not
often with any satisfactory sound. There is little or no
alliteration, and what there is such as " Haelende " and
"healfunga" is not of a rhythmical character at all.
It is quite good prose ; but the only rhetorical device
about it is the inversion which was almost natural to the
language, and which, by an interesting coincidence, we
shall find revived in the prose of another great ecclesiastical
writer, Bishop Fisher, at the beginning of a new stage of
English, many centuries beyond ^Elfric.

The second is much more ornate in fact, it seems to

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 35

have been touched upon by a German critic as " semi-
metrical." I should not call it so. There is still little
alliteration, and that rarely of a rhythmical character.
" Hundes liccung gehealS wunda " is something of an
exception, but is probably a proverb. On the other hand,
if it be compared with the Centurion passage, very much
more attempt to achieve elaborate prose - rhythm is
observable. The matter goes in long balanced clauses,
not stave-like, but by no means dissimilar to the antithetic
arrangement of much later English prose ; and some
particular care seems to be taken to choose words of
similar cadence in particular places. To the passage
which I have scanned we may return.

In the pretty and vivid picture of St. Cuthbert and the
seals and the peeping Tom of a monk (who, by the way,
was punished for his peeping) there is much further
change in the method. The alliteration is laid on with
a butter-knife, if not with a trowel ; and the clauses are
susceptible of stave-division, though not very well. The
pictorial-poetical nature of the subject excuses much ;
but perhaps a severe critic might say, " There is prose and
there is poetry ; you have outstepped one and not quite
reached the other."

In the fourth example, on the other hand (where I
have kept Professor Skeat's line-division, though I have
made the translation, as in other cases, to suit myself), it
seems to me that we have ylfric at almost his formal best.
He is less prodigal of alliteration, but what there is is well
managed, and while he undoubtedly has something very
like stave-division, it is stave-division of a peculiar kind,
deliberately made to serve the ends of prose, and unques-
tionably fine. Blake might have had the passage before
him.

But I am very much deceived if the sentence given
above, which I have divided into its proper rhythmical
clauses and have even ventured (at the risk of tuggings
and torments like St. Andrew's) to quantify, is not an
example better deserving the title of " fine prose " than the
whimsical passage from the probably later " Paternoster "

36 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of Solomon and Saturn * which Professor Earle more
whimsically selected for that designation :

he is reSra and scearpra Sonne He is fiercer and sharper than

eal middangeard, Seah he sy all the world, though it be within

binnan his feower hwommum its four corners full-driven of wild

fulgedrifen wildeora, and anra deer, and each several deer have

gehwylc deor hasbbe synderlice severally twelve horns of iron,

xii hornas irene, etc. etc.

That is fantastic, and, though not devoid of rhythm, it owes
most of this to the simple multiplication of numerical
fancies. Ours, though it has, of course, none of the
flowery language for which these Homilies are rather
famous, has a division and a variation of the kola 2 which
are by no means rudimentary. And already we see the
differentia of harmonious prose, in all languages perhaps,
in English certainly, emerging to wit, that while in verse
the rhythmical effect of the larger integral values shduld
be similar, in prose it should be as various as possible, yet
so that it shall not jog or jar. The simpler trochaic run
of the other passages quoted already combines itself here,
it will be seen, into the three-, four-, and even five-footed
sections of the most accomplished prose amphibrachs, the
bacchius and its opposite, paeons, and even dochmiacs
perhaps ; the balance not "regular," but extended to that
antithetic parallelism which, with the ascent and descent
that cannot quite come yet, is the great prose engine,
already emerges. 3 From my reading of ^Elfric I could
give many more passages equal to this, and perhaps some
better ; but not, I think, anything that stands out more
remarkably or more naturally from a context good in
itself, but, on the whole, of a lower level.

Later Whether, and if so, to what extent, these interesting

WuTfstan an ^ elaborate experiments of ^Elfric were followed up by

1 Earle, p. 382. The full passage in Kemble's Salomon and Saturnus
(yElfric Society, London, 1848), pp. 150, 151. " Hems " for " hwommum " is
tempting, and I had once succumbed to it, but it is no doubt wrong. Kemble
gives " pinnacles.'"

2 This Greek word for the " members" or divisions of a sentence seems
to me better than the Latin " clause," especially for rhythmical use.

8 A friendly objection has been taken to this sentence as too difficult ; but
I hope better things of those readers who care to attend to the scanning given
before, with its attendant note, that sup. at p. 33, and the Table of Feet.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 37

any of his numerous pupils or others, the unfortunately
restricted body of Anglo-Saxon prose literature does not
allow us to know. It is, on the whole, improbable, for,
after the tenth century, the literary gift of the nation and
language was obviously dwindling, and preparing itself
for a transformation. Our later fragments or complete
documents do not show much, if any, sign of it. The
eccentric " Paternoster " description just referred to is
little more than a jeu d 'esprit probably (from what we
know of the Anglo-Saxon manner and of the source of
the " Solomon and Marcolf " dialogues in which it occurs)
Eastern or Lower Greek in origin. Nor, in going through
these once more, can I find anything in the prose part
(much is sheer if not very regular verse) that manifests
peculiarity or individuality of style. The Chronicle con-
tinues now and then to furnish examples of good straight-
forward historical narration, but there is nothing new to be
said about it. Neither can I discover much deserving
special analysis in the sometimes highly praised work of
Archbishop Wulfstan. It is very far from contemptible,
and shows that the writer, who was doubtless a fair Latin
scholar, followed his Latin masters without too much
slavishness, but with a wise capacity for taking hints.
However, Wulfstan has sometimes been so much, lauded
that perhaps a specimen should be given. Let us take
one of those on which Professor Earle based the rather
excessive statement that " of all the writers before the
Conquest whose names are known to us, Wulfstan is the
one whose diction has the most marked physiognomy."

Uton beon a urum hlaforde Let us be aye to our lord leal 1

holde and getreowe and asfre and true, and ever with all our

eallum mihtum his wurSscipe mights his worship rear [set up,

raeran and his willan wyrcan, maintain] and his will work ; for

forSam call, bet we asfre for that all that we ever for right

riht hlafordhelde doS, eal we hit lord-loyalty do, all we it do our-

dotS us sylfum to mycelre bearfe, selves to mickle thrift, 1 inasmuch

1 It is a pity that we have lost, while the Germans possess, hold and georne;
nor is " thrift " etymologically = ' ' ]>earfe " ; but the above renderings, " leal "
and "gladly," are near enough in sense and pretty close in rhythm to the
first-mentioned words, while "profit" may replace "thrift" if desired.

38 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

forSam Sam bi5 witodlice God as is certainly God leal l to him

hold, }>e bi5 his hlaforde rihtlice that is rightly leal to his lord ;

hold ; and eac ah hlaforda ge- and eke to any lord what-

hwylc J>aes for micle bearfe, }>set soever it is for mickle thrift l

he his men rihtlice healde. And that he his men rightly hold,

we biddaS and beodaS, J>aet Codes And we bid and bode that God's

beowas, be for urne cynehlaford theows [slaves, servants'] who for

and for eal cristen folc bingian our king-lord and for all Christian

scylan and be godra manna ael- folk intercede shall, and by good

messan libbaS, J>aet hy baes georne men's alms live, that they this

earnian, libban heora lif swa gladly 1 strive to live their life as

swa bee him wisian, and swa their books wise [guide'] them

swa heora ealdras hym taecan, and as their elders them teach,

and began heora beowdom georne, and perform their theow&om

ponne maegon hy aegper ge hym [service] gladly. Then may they

sylfum wel fremian ge eallum each whither both to themselves

cristenum folce. well frame [do] and to all

Christian people.

This is good enough, but not, I think, very specially 're-
markable ; and the Archbishop, as many descendants of his
flock were to do later, has got into a very clumsily hinged
and jointed sentence to open with. As for pure rhythm,
there is little but the trochaic and sometimes dactylic
ending (which is ubiquitous) to notice.

The one Anglo-Saxon production of the latest period
before the Conquest which seems to me to display distinct
idiosyncrasy, and a promise the performance of which
was unfortunately to be postponed for more than three
centuries by the necessity of remoulding the language,
is the little story of Apollonius of Tyre?

us We have, of course, nothing to do here with the very
vre ' interesting literary associations of this story ; but perhaps
we may have a little to do with its immediate original.
Thorpe's statement 3 that it was translated from " a chapter
of the Gesta Romanorum " was, of course, either an effect
of ignorance or a slip of expression, for the Gesta
certainly dates centuries after Anglo-Saxon ceased to be

1 See preceding note.

2 The peculiar excellence of Anglo-Saxon narrative had been shown much
earlier. The "Slaying of Cynewulf" itself promises this; the translation,
at Alfred's decree, of Pope Gregory's Dialogues by Bishop Wserferth of
Worcester (ed. Hecht, Leipzig, 1900) displays it in many places.

3 Apollonius of Tyre (London, 1834), p. iv.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 39

a literary or even a living language. It would rather seem
not improbable (and this is quite in our division) that
the original, at short second or even at first hand, was
Greek. The clear, straightforward medium of the Greek
Romances (excepting the Euphuist-Meredithian ambages
of the much later Hysminias and Hysmine) comes nearer
to the manner of our Apollonius than most " Dark Age "
Latin.

At any rate, the terms just used are certainly deserved
by what we have (it is but a portion) of the story.
There is not the slightest tendency either to definite
rhythmical alliteration or to the forging of long balanced
sentences though both these had, as we have seen, been
freely used by ^Elfric. It is narrative style as simple
as Bunyan's and even simpler, with the conversation
as naturally and unrhetorically adjusted as might be.
Except once more in Sir John Mandeville, it is difficult to
find an equally good vehicle for simple non- romantic
story-telling before Bunyan himself, if not before Defoe
and the eighteenth century. But then the narrative itself
is of the simplest character pure, though not ex-
travagant, adventure (without mystical or chivalrous
sublimation) and simple exchange of thought being the
matter that has to be given. There had been a good deal
of this straightforward narrative faculty displayed by the
language in different places of Homily and translation.
But the story, which, though prudishly or whimsically
rejected by Chaucer, was to attract Gower and Shake-
speare, is, in this form, the best piece of the kind that Old
English has to show ; and its author is almost the head
of the race and lineage not merely of Bunyan and Defoe
themselves, but of Fielding and Scott and Thackeray.
Here is a piece of it, which surely needs no translation :

Mid J>i Se se cyning J>as word gecwaeS, Sa faeringa \suddenly\
J>ar code in Saes cynges iunge dohtor, and cyste hyre faeder and Sa
ymbsittendan. Da heo becom to Apollonio, j>a gewasnde heo ongean
to hire faeder, and cwaeS, Du g6da cyningc, and min se leofesta
faeder, hwaet is )>es iunga man, J>e ongean Se on swa wurSlicum setle
sit, mid sdrlicum andwlitan ? nkt ic hwaet he besorgaS. Da cwaeS
se cyningc, Leofe dohtor, J>es iunga man is forliden [shipwrecked],

40 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and he gecwemde [pleased] me manna betst on Sam plegan ; forSam
ic hine gelaSode to Sysum urum gebeorscipe. Nat ic hwast he is, ne
hwanon he is ; ac gif Su wille witan hwaet he sy, axsa hine, forSam
be gedafenaS [it befits'] bast bu wite. Da eode baet maeden to
Apollonio, and mid forwandigendre [respectful] spraece cwaeS, Deah
Su stille sy and unrot [sad], beah ic bine aeSelborennesse od Se
geseo : nu bonne, gif Se to hefig ne bince, sege me binne naman,
and bin gelymp arece [accident tell] me. t)a cwaeS Apollonius, Gif
Su for neode axsast aefter minum naman, ic secge be, ic hine forleas
on se. Gif Su wilt mine aeSelborennesse witan, wite Su baet ic hig
forlet on Tharsum. Daet masden cwaeS, Sege me gewislicor, baet ic
hit msege understandan. Apollonius ba soSlice hyre arehte ealle his
gelymp, and aet bare spraecan ende him feollon tearas of Sam eagum.

General It seems unnecessary to take any minute notice of

summary d tne l atest fragments of pure Anglo-Saxon writing, such as
the well-known passage from the Chronicle about the
sufferings of the people in the castles of the robber barons
during Stephen's reign. There is nothing new to be
found in them, and there was not likely to be. It will be
more profitable to take some general (if still interim} view
of the rhythmical and " stylistic " character of the litera-
ture as a whole a posteriori, as a counterpart to the
examination given above of the apparent characteristics
of the language as capable of such expression a priori.

A sane criticism will certainly not put either its
capabilities or -its performance very low ; though such a
criticism will hardly endorse the enthusiastic estimate of
Mr. Earle. 1 For what may be called, without the least
insulting intention, the childish things of prose narration,
simple instruction, or, in other words, conveyance of
information in a straightforward, not slovenly, intelligible
way, Anglo-Saxon displays itself as excellently suited.
If the famous definition of style, 2 as being nothing else
but the clear expression of the meaning, be accepted, the
oldest form of our language may certainly be said to
possess it in a very high degree.

1 If anybody should say, "Why do you quote Earle? He is quite ob-
solete as a scholar," my answer is ready : " Please show me any scholar
of the present day who has shown himself to be equally conversant, from the
literary point of view, with Old, Middle, and Modern English. " I know
one, perhaps two ; but neither has written in extenso on the matter.

2 Coleridge's, though not quite in his words.

ii OLD ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM 41

Neither, as we have seen, is it incapable of proceeding
to a degree (in the other sense) still higher, and of
expressing that meaning in a fashion a cujusque natura
fluens a style expressing the idiosyncrasy of the writer
or speaker by ornament and suggestion of various kinds.

On the whole, however, these gifts are expended on
too small a range of subjects, and the writers are too
busy with the subject itself. Every now and then, as
in the well-known description of the mandrake and the
process of safely collecting it, with some others in the
Leechdoms l and elsewhere, as well as in the works previ-
ously noted, one receives the suggestion that, if the range
had been less limited and the temptation to original
composition 2 larger, a much greater development might
have taken place. Yet it may seem more probable that
the stock-in-trade of the language was as yet too limited
for prose of the first quality. And the phenomena which
we have seen in ^Elfric confirm this in a striking manner.
Here is a literature which seems to some extent to contra-
dict the general adage, "Verse first, prose afterwards."
Yet after centuries of exercise in both, it seems to know
hardly any other way of attaining elaborate prose than to
fall back on the very forms and fashions of verse itself.
Now this is an evil sign. There is nothing unhealthy in
the process so long as the form of prose itself is kept.
On the contrary, we have since seen three, if not four,
periods in which prose has borrowed something from
verse to its immense advantage : in the mid-seventeenth
century, after the great Elizabethan period ; in the later
eighteenth century, after the work of Dryden and Pope ;
in the third decade of the nineteenth, after the first

1 Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms, etc. (3 vols., " Rolls Series," London, 1864-66),
a book which, if it were not full of interest in itself, I should cherish for the
memory of its editor, Thomas Oswald Cockayne, one of the least pedantic
and most original schoolmasters that any one ever had the luck to be taught
by. The " Mandrake" is also in Thorpe's Analecta, p. 116.

2 The extreme care with which interlined translations or glosses were
made, and the effect they must have exercised, can be best seen from the
Liber Scintillarum, possibly eighth century (E.E.T.S., 1889). They also
extended (see Cockayne's Preface to Leechdoms} to Greek in separate words,
if not in continuous passages.

42 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP, n

Romantic group ; in the seventh or eighth, after the work
of those about Tennyson. But none of the great prose
masters of these periods, neither Browne nor Taylor,
neither Johnson nor Burke, neither Landor nor De
Quincey, neither Mr. Pater nor any one else, becomes a
mere transfuga from prose to verse like ^Elfric in his
occasional and indeed frequent use of alliteration and stave-
division. There is something apparently like it in Mr.
Ruskin's excessive addiction to blank-verse insets ; but, as
we shall see, I hope, in due time, the appearance is partly
if not wholly deceptive. Such a falling back upon the
tricks of verse, especially of a verse which was itself losing
its stamina, and turning to rhyme and other formerly
uncongenial things, is an almost unmistakable hand-
writing on the wall, prophetic of the passing of a
kingdom.

CHAPTER III

THE FORMATION OF PROSE RHYTHM IN MIDDLE
ENGLISH BEFORE C. 1 3 SO

Importance and difficulty of Early and Middle English in our sub-
ject The Ancren Riwle Analysis of passages " The Wooing
of Our Lord " Other twelfth and thirteenth century pieces
General remarks on early Middle English prose Influence of
the Vulgate, and of French prose.

I HAVE endeavoured elsewhere a to make good the position importance
that if any one would English prosody win, with Middle O f Early TnJ
English he must needs begin. The truth (though a Middle

e ,. . *v 1 English in our

stage of preliminary enquiry, then almost unimportant, is subject.
now of great importance) remains still true in regard
to prose ; and it could not but be so, seeing that
it is in this period that the English language proper
is formed, and that, in consequence, we must look to it
for the origin of all the formal characteristics of English
literature. But the quest is here much more dark-
ling, and the results scantier and more doubtful, than
in the case of verse. In the first and main place, we have
now returned to the usual law of literary order which
Anglo-Saxon seems to violate, or at least to ignore. The
new blend achieves itself slowly ; and such achievement
as there is, for the first two or three centuries, is mainly
in verse. Moreover, while the great preponderance of
ecclesiastical and theological literature in Anglo-Saxon
had not been without effects, and those not wholly bene-
ficial effects, on the development of prose in the new

1 In the History of English Prosody, and also in A Historical Manual of
English Prosody.

44 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

period, it is not a case of preponderance, it is one of
monopoly. With the exception of the later parts of the
Chronicle, which are almost pure Anglo-Saxon, and have
been dealt with in so far as they need dealing, it may
almost be said that there is not a single piece of prose of
a profane kind in English from the Conquest to the birth
of Chaucer all but three hundred years. The great
twelfth-century school of historians employs Latin solely ;
and hands on the vehicle. There are no prose vernacular
scientific or miscellaneous treatises worth speaking of in
early Middle English ; there are no prose romances except
Saints' Lives. In these, therefore, in Homilies, and in
other divisions of the same kind of literature, we have to
seek our only quarry. This is almost all translation, 1 and
even among it there is but one piece of bulk and merit
combined, the Ancren Riwle.

It is particularly important to remember that in the
earlier part of this time there was no French prose to
imitate ; though it is barely possible that by the time of
the Riwle there was ; indeed, there are theories of a
French original. French words, as we shall see, there
are, and they are most important ; while the author dis-
tinctly anticipates reading of English or French 2 on the
part of his disciple-ladies. But even earlier there had
been some strivings. Professor Earle, enthusiast as he
was, could find nothing (he does not even mention the
Ancren Riwle] to cite and comment on except the beautiful
if rather morbid " Wooing of Our Lord," to which we shall
come in due course. But it will be desirable here to
select and comment a little more widely. The various
treatises and homilies included in Dr. Morris's Old English
Miscellany and Old English Homilies may be scattered
over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, according to

1 There was, of course, preaching in English all along ; we know, for
instance, that the famous Abbot Samson of St. Edmund's "preached to the
people in English, but in the Norfolk dialect." This must have been years
before the probable date of the Ancren Riwle ; for Samson became abbot in
1182, and was then forty-seven years old. He also "read English rolls,"
which seems not to have been a common accomplishment. But we do not
know what he read.

2 Ancren Riwle (ed. Morton, Camden Society, London, 1853), p. 44.

in THE FORMA TION OF PROSE RHYTHM 45

an order difficult to settle as to actual MSS., and im-
possible to correct according to their originals. I shall
therefore take my examples avowedly pell-mell, though
not without indicating any flashes of internal evidence as
to prose accomplishment.

There used to be a theory whether it has, like most The Ancren
such theories, been given up and revived again, and how
often in each case, I do not know that the author of
the Ancren Riwle was also the author of the " Wooing of
Our Lord," of Soul's Ward," of " Holy Maidenhead," etc.
The innocent, but rather monotonous, restlessness of philo-
logists seems to have only two ways of exercising itself
in this direction to lump anonyma on a single head, or to
distribute assigned work to other folk than the traditional
assignees. In neither of these little games has it ever
amused me to take a hand. I take the fords as I find
them. But as the Ancren Riwle, whether the work of
Bishop Richard Poore or of anybody else ; whether
originally Latin, French, or English, or first Latin, then
French, then English ; whether written by the author of
the others or not is the most important, the most varied,
and the most interesting, it might undoubtedly be well
to take it first. We have long been promised newer and
newer-fangled editions of it; but as they have not
arrived, we can stick to the old Camden Society one by
Canon Morton, which, whatever its philological short-
comings, is amply sufficient to literature.

The monitor of the anchoresses writes with no rude-
ness, but with a great simplicity ; and if, as has been
also suggested, the passionate and florid " Wooing of Our
Lord " is a paraphrase of any part of his work, it must
either be by a different hand, or by the same hand in a
most curiously different frame of mind and "habit of
oration." His speech is singularly straightforward, and
the changes of vocabulary and syntax have brought his
style much nearer to modern form than anything we
have yet seen. The effect, especially of his few Romance
words, is very striking. And sometimes, as we shall
see, his prose-structure promises really mighty things to

46 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

come, when the actual word -store shall have been
sufficiently varied and enriched.

Eue heold ine Parais longe tale mid te neddre, & told hire al pe
lescun pe God hire hefde ilered, & Adam, of pen epple ; & so the
ueond 1 purh hire word, understond anonriht hire wocnesse, and
ivond l wei touward hire of hire uorlorenesse. Vre lefdi, Seinte
Marie, dude al anoSer wise : ne tolde heo pen engle none tale ; auh
askede him ping scheortliche pe heo ne ku5e. Ye, mine leoue
sustren, uoleweS ure lefdi & nout pe kakelinde Eue.

This ought to require no translation ; but perhaps an
exact modernising, on the lines of previous attempts,
will bring out the very great advance that has been made
in the direction of modernity itself :

Eve held in Paradise long tale with the adder, and told her all
the lesson that God her had learnt, and Adam, of the apple ; and
so the fiend, through her word, understood anonright her weakness,
and found way toward her of her forlornness [rum]. Our Lady,
St. Mary, did all anotherwise ; not told she the angel no tale ;
but asked him [the] thing shortly that she knew not. Ye, my lief
sisters, follow our Lady and not the cackling Eve.

Here is a longer passage :

Euerichon of peos wordes wolde habben longe hwule uorte beon
wel iopened [explained] ; and gif ich hie swuSe \yery\ uorSward
[forthivard, onward], demeure ge pe lengre. O [one] word ich sigge
[say] efter [after = about\ ower su[i]nnen : pet hwonne se ge penche<5
of helle wo & of heoueriche wunne ; vnderstondeS pet God wolde a
sume wise scheawen ham to men iSisse worlde bi worldliche pinen
& worldliche wunnen ; and scheawede ham uorS ase pauh hit were
a scheadewe uor no likure ne beoS heo. Ye beo5 ouer pisse
worldes see, uppen pe brugge of heouene. LokeS pet ge ne beon
nout iliche pe horse pet is scheouh, & blencheS uor one scheadewe
upo pe heie brugge, & falleS adun into pe watere of pe heie brugge.
To scheowe heo beoS mid alle pet fleoS uor ane peinture, pet
punches ham grislich & grureful uorto biholden. Wo and wunne
ipisse worlde al nis bute ase a scheadewe al nis bute ase a peinture.

Every one of these words would have long for to be well opened.
But if I hie very forthward, abide ye the longer. One word I say
about your sins : that when ye bethink yourselves of Hell's woe and
Heaven's win, understand that God would on some wise show them
to men in this world by worldly pains and worldly wins. And he

1 Note "z/iend" and "wound," as they said in Tarrant-Keynes that day,
as they certainly did, not many years ago, in its neighbourhood, and as I
hope they do still in spite of board-schools and other abominations.

in THE FORMATION OF PROSE RHYTHM 47

showed them forth as if it were a shadow : for no liker be they.
Ye be over this world's sea upon the bridge of Heaven. Look that
ye be not like the horse that is shy and blencheth at a shadow upon
the high bridge and falleth adown into the water from the high
bridge. Too shy they be withal that flee for a painting, that
thinketh them grisly and gruesome to behold. Woe and win in
this world, all is not but as a shadow ; all is not but as a picture.

Here a shorter :

Schrift schal beon wreiful, bitter, mid seoruwe, ihol, naked, ofte
imaked, hihful, edmod, scheomeful, dredful, & hopeful, wis, soS
& willes ; owune & studeuest ; biSouht biuoren longe.

Followed by separate sections on each characteristic, as
thus :

Schrift schal beon wreiful.
Schrift ouh forte beon soS, etc. 1

And here the longest we can give :

Peonne beo ge dunes iheied up to be heouene ; vor lo ! hwu
spekeS be lefdi iSet swete luue boc : " Venit dilectus meus saliens
in montibus, transiliens colles." 2 "Mi leof kume<5," he seiS,
" leapinde o5e dunes ouerleapinde hulles." Dunes bitocneS beo bet
ledeS hexst lif ; hulles beoS be lowure. Nu, seiS heo bet hire leof
leapeS o5e hulles [should be dunes] ; bet is, to-tret ham, & to-mleS
ham, & boleS bet me to-tret ham, & tukeS ham alto wundre ;
scheaweS in ham his owune treden bet me trodde him in ham, &
iuinde hwu he was to -treden, ase his treoden scheaweS. pis
beo5 be heie dunes, ase be munt of Mungiue, & be dunes of
Armenie. PCO hulles bet beo<5 lowure, beo, ase be lefdi seiS, hire
sulf ouerleapeS, ne trusted heo so wel on ham, uor hore feblesce ;
uor ne muhte heo nout iSolien swuche to-tredunge, and bereuore heo
ouerleapeS ham, & forbereS ham, & forbuweS ham uort bet heo beon
iwaxen herre, urom hulles to dunes. His schedewe hure & hure
ouergeo" and wriS ham be hwule bet he leapeS ouer ham ; bet is,
sum ilicnesse he leiS on ham of his liue on eortfe, ase bauh hit were
his schedewe. Auh be dunes underuoS be treden of him suluen,
and scheaweS in hore liue hwuch his liflode was hwu & hwar he
code i hwuche uilte i hwuche wo he ledde his lif on eorSe.

1 Most of this must be clear to any one. Wreiful ="\>\wrayi\d."
"accusing"; hihful hie-ful, "hurrying," "swift"; /wa? = humble.
Willes and owune, which may look as if they were tautological, or at least
connected, are quite separate ; willes is " voluntary " but owune, which
Canon Morton hastily translated " voluntary," is explained in the text to
mean "personal" not gossip about other folk. Studeuest, which may suggest
"studious" to the unwary, is simply " stud -7>est" = " steadfast."

2 A shortened form of Cant. Cant. ii. 8 : " Vox dilecti mei ! ecce iste venit
saliens in montibus, transiliens colles."

48 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Then are ye mountains heightened up to Heaven ; for lo ! how
speaketh the lady in that sweet love -book, Venit dilectus meus
saliens in montibus, transiliens colles. " My love cometh," she
saith, "leaping on the downs, overleaping the hills." Downs
betokeneth them that lead the highest life, hills are the lower.
Now saith she that her love leaped on the downs, that is, to-treads
them \the intensive "to-" as in "to-brake"] and to-fileth them,
and tholeth that men should to-tread them, and tucketh them
all to wonder ; sheweth in them his own treadings that men trod
in him ; and they find how he was to-trodden, as his treadings shew.
These are the high downs as the Mount of Mungiue x and the downs
of Armenia. The hills that be lower, these, as the lady saith
herself, 2 she overleapeth, and she trusteth not so well in them
because of their feebleness. For they might not thole such to-
treading, and therefore she overleapeth them and forbeareth them,
and forboweth \avoidetti\ them till that they be waxen higher, from
hills to downs. His shadow, however, overgoeth and wrappeth
them the while that he leapeth over them ; that is a likeness he
layeth on them of his life on earth as though it were his shadow.
But the downs undergo the treading of himself, and shew in tljeir
life what his life was how and where he yode, in what vileness,
in what woe, he led his life on earth.

Analysis of Now the first of these pieces is quite simple ; the
passages, often-made contrast between Eve and Mary could not be
put with less rhetorical flourish. But it might be put
much worse. There is the sense of balance, knowledge of
the value of mixed short and long sentences ; and though
the prose runs quite fluently there is no attempt at poetic
rhythm. Nor does it very much matter whether this is
due to a definite sense of the difference of the harmonies.
But there is something else to notice here, and this is the
absence of Romance words. Not one of the important
vocables is other than pure English : the familiar note of
" cackle " sounds throughout.

In the next passage the effect is strikingly different,

1 Morton, " Montjoye." I had thought it might be " Montgibel " = Etna.
Ararat and Etna, the most famous and storied " downs " (smoke the Dorset
man) of Ponent and Levant, would go well together. But Mr. Ker corrected
this vain imagination, pointing out to me that it is simply " Mons_/bz/z.r" = the
Great St. Bernard, or the Alps generally. In fact, reading Layamon almost
simultaneously, I came upon the two forms "Mungiue" and "Montjoye"
opposite each other in the two versions, and meaning "Alps." Hence, prob-
ably, Morton's rendering; elsewhere in Layamon II. it is "Montagu."

2 " Lefdi " has led the copyist astray. It is the Lord Christ Aimself.

in THE FORMA TION OF PROSE RHYTHM 49

and the causes are as strikingly evident. Whether the
author had any particular model I must leave to Homiletic
specialists to determine ; my subject is the means whereby
he effected it may be imitation, it may be invention.
The piece, I say, is eminently rhetorical, and Rhetoric uses
her well-tried weapons. The figurative character of the
whole is only indirectly of moment ; but the amount oi
this indirect moment is great. For figures, as has been
known of old, always bring with them and indeed can
hardly exist without other devices. We have definite
and not merely accidental alliteration, " hellish woe and
heavenly win," "worldly pains and worldly wins," "showed
as a shadow," and perhaps " bridge " and " brink." We
have repetition and turn of words. We have already
phrase in ranged clauses " all is not but as a shadow ; all
is not but as a picture." And lastly we have Romance
words.

One MS. indeed seems to have " abode " instead of
" demeure," and it is curious that this latter has not
abided in our language, which has adopted so many
French synonyms. Neither has " peinture," but of this
there was not, so far as I know, any vernacular variant :
" painting " or " picture " had not come in. Even if there
were, it would be probable that it was rather an effort of
a particular copyist to get a stumbling-block out of the
way than an endeavour in several to unfamiliarise a
familiar word. And the effect of these two or three
French words, with their different sound and different
accent, among the Teutonic, can escape no ear that is
naturally given, or that has been trained, to the discrimi-
nation of literary resonance. There are not enough of
them yet, and they keep their original form too much to
be very powerful : there is more conflict than influence.
But the influence is on the way, and before long it will
arrive, bringing with it the alternation, if not the actual
substitution, of " rising " for " falling " rhythm. For the
tendency of French to throw such accent as it has to the
last syllable inevitably provides iambic or anapaestic
cadence instead of trochaic or dactylic.

50 A HISTOR Y OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The third passage, or rather bunch of beginnings,
shows that this prose knew how to be emphatic. The
selection of short sharp words, the alliteration, the avoiding
of any " panning out," are all noteworthy. Some silly
things have been said about the superiority of " Saxon "
to " Latin " phrase, but it must be admitted (as one looks
at Canon Morton's text and his translation on the two sides
of the page-opening) that " Shrift ought to be sooth " is
better than " Confession ought to be truthful," though the
very contrast itself shows how language and literature
will gain when the two horses draw together in the
same car.

The last passage is perhaps the most interesting of all,
because it attains the highest level of rhythm without
any special device. As before, I must leave to some
student of homiletics the question whether any particular
treatise on the Canticles may yield the material of these
remarks ; as before also, the discovery of an original
would not in any way affect our study except as it might
assist it. I think that any one who reads the text with
the assistance of the " construe " which the modernising
of the original language enables us to make extremely
close will see that a by no means ordinary brand of
rhythmed prose, depending mainly on balance, but on
that balance varied very considerably, is here attained.
There is hardly a single word that is really obsolete, 1
though in one or two instances the change of form may
hide the meaning from very careless or purblind eyes ;
and though inflections to some extent alter the " specific
gravity " of individual words, they do not do so to a very
important effect, because they balance each other. For
instance, " treden " and " tredde " maintain the relation in
" tread " and " trod," the weak syllable being eliminated
on either side. There is very little Romance vocabulary,
though " feblesce " (for " wocness ") of course strikes one,
and " vilt " still more. On the other hand, there is little

1 " Tucian " = " chastise " is really such, though perhaps "teach" and
"taught," as in the A.V. for "torment," may represent it. There are,
indeed, some vernacular and dialectic uses of " tuck " itself, which seem not
very distant. But they tell us that " tuck " is only " tug," or " touch."

in THE FORMATION OF PROSE RHYTHM 51

alliteration, though " ledeth hexst lif : hulles beoth the
lowure " has a kind of cross-suggestion, and so have one
or two other places. 1 The accomplishment of the passage
and to my ear this is not inconsiderable arises
solely from the attainment of that undulating movement,
balanced but varied, parallel but not stichic, which con-
stitutes the rhythm of prose.

If we compare with this the passionate passage which "The Woo-
Mr. Earle selected 2 from the " Wooing of Our Lord," and
which some have thought to be a paraphrase of other
things in the Ancren Riwle itself, the very great difference
of the styles will emerge at once. The matter of both is
largely supplied by the Canticles, and the intention of
both was to supply nuns or anchoresses with matter for
meditation. But the two writers, whoever they were, set
about their work in the most different ways possible,
whether the selection of words or the arrangement of
them be considered. We saw that the author of the
Ancren Riwle selected his words soberly, by no means
indulged in " spilth of adjectives," and rather eschewed
obtrusive or profuse alliteration. This writer lavishes ad-
jectives and adverbs " ahefulle deueles," " unimete mihti,"
etc. ; and simply wallows in alliteration " dradst with

1 As " sum i/icnesse he /ei5 on ham of his /iue on eorSe."

2 " A ihesu swete ihesu leue J>at te luue of )>e beo al mi likinge.

" Bote moni man )>urh his strengSe and hardischipe ek makes him luued and
3erned . And is ani swa hardi swa artu ? Nai . for Jm J>e ane dreddes nawt
wiS J>in anre deore bodi to fihte ajaines alle J>e ahefulle deueles of helle . J>at
hwuch of ham swa is lest laSeliche . and grureful . mihte he swuch as he is to
monkin him scheawe ' al )>e world were offeard him ane to bihalde . for ne
mihte na mon him seo and in his wit wunie . bute 3if ]>e grace and te strengSe
of crist baldede his heorte.

" PU art 3ette her wiS swa unimete mihti J>at wiS )>i deorewurSe hond nailet
on rode ' Jm band ta helle dogges . and reftes ham hare praie }>at tai hefden
grediliche gripen and helden hit faste for adames sunne.

" PU kene kidde kempe robbedes helle hus . lesedes tine prisuns and riddes
ham ut of cwalm hus and leddes him wiS )>e self to {>i 3immede bur . bold of
eche blisse . for J>i of )>e mi lefmon was soSliche quiddet . Drihti[n] is mahti
strong and kene ifihte . And for }>i 3if me likes stalewurSe lefmon f luue iwile
J>e ihesu strongest ouer alle . J>at J)i maht felle mine starke sawle fan . and te
strengSe of J>e helpe mi muchele wacnesse . and hardischipe of )>e balde min
herte.

"A ihesu swete ihesu leue |>at! te-, luue of J>e beo alfmi likinge." English
Prose, pp. 395-397 ; or Morris, First Series, pp. 271-273.

52 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

thy dear body," " greedily grips," " thu kene kidde kempe."
On the other hand, he has little command of balance in
any cunning or varied form, and throws his clauses
together with either a complete disregard of general
harmonic effect or a singularly bad ear for it. The
undoubting if somewhat overstrained sentiment, and the
echo of some beautiful but borrowed phrases, may give
the piece a sort of glamour ; but it is not really good
prose in any division. For variety's sake I have not
translated it ; indeed nobody who is not merely scared
by the displacing of a few letters can have any difficulty
with most of it

Other twelfth The short Homilies (accompanying the " Wooing ")
which Dr - Morris gave in his collection, 1 and assigned
partly at least to the twelfth century, 2 do not generally
show any particular attempt at style or rhythm. In fact,
as would be natural from the large amount of actual
scriptural citation that they contain, they suggest oftenest
versicular arrangement of the Vulgate. Some of them
seem to be inspired by, if not directly modelled on,
^Elfric ; but though this attempt at archaism is interesting
(a twelfth or thirteenth century " Wardour Street," as
some scornful moderns would say), it does not come to
much. Most of the " Wooing " itself is rapturous and
almost hysterical ejaculation, making itself a style, if style
it can be called, congenial to its mood.

On the contrary, the much more vigorous and mascu-
line " Soul's Ward " 3 strikes into a style, also suitable, but
approaching much nearer to that of the Ancren Riwle,
with rather more alliteration. And this applies also
to the striking piece, untitled, which Morris has christened
as " An Bispel " (A Parable). Here the flowing narrative,
which has been praised in the Gregory and the Apollonius,
reappears, with additions of sententious comment some-
times of great merit, in the simpler oratorical style. It

1 Old English Homilies, two vols., E.E.T.S. (London, 1868 and 1873).

2 Some of them, in their original forms, may be of the eleventh. None
can be younger than the thirteenth.

3 It appears to be a translation from a Latin piece, belonging to the great
school of St. Victor.

in THE FORMATION OF PROSE RHYTHM 53

is, on the whole, the most sinewy example of what they
used (by no bad term) to call " semi-Saxon " composition.
But it could only be well exhibited in an extract rather
too long for us.

In this second stage, then (for there is not much good General
in dealing with the Ayenbite of Inwyt l and other purely
dialectic examples), we see in some respects a falling-off English prose.
in others, or one other, a distinct if not very great
advance. The falling-off is mainly connected with the
great contraction of matter, with a strict limitation to
one kind, and with the further limitation of models con-
ditioned inevitably by the examples of precedent homiletic
writing in the same language, and by the omnipresent
influence of Latin work in similar kinds, and still more of
the Vulgate. In reading that consummate production 2
with a view to such purposes as we have now before us,
we must at once keep in view the continuous and the
versicular structure and division. The paragraphs of the
so-called Revised Version are, like most other things of
that unfortunate enterprise, of very little use from the
literary point of view ; but while the versicles themselves
generally justify themselves completely in any language
to a good ear, it will, to such an ear, be clear that they
frequently group themselves also into larger integers
sentences longer than the verse, or even groups of
sentences. Of the paragraph, as such, it may be doubted
whether any Anglo-Saxon or Middle English writer had
much notion from the purely rhythmical-stylistic point of
view. He had done with one subject and he took to
another : that was all.

But as you turn over the Vulgate itself you see how influence of
many, and what different, models of style it offers to the Vulgate>
competent followers. Take the story of Naaman, Reg. IV.
(V. in A.V.), and you find a long narrative, capable of
being divided up into various integers, but with no, or

1 Which indeed hardly belongs here, having been probably written at the
time of, or only just before, Chaucer's birth.

2 Naturally, tenth to thirteenth century writers did not read the Clementine
redaction, and perhaps not many of them read the same version exactly ; but
that did not matter.

54 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

few, rhetorical tricks of style. Take any of the so-called
poetical books in the wide sense, Job, the Psalms, the
Proverbs, Isaiah, and you find the famous parallelism, the
short aphoristic statement divided in stave. Take such a
passage as Ecclesiasticus xxv. 1 8-21 and you find the rhet-
orical figure, epanaphora et omnem . . . et non at the
beginning and middle of four consecutive verses. Take,
above all, as it is in another sense " above all " but the
highest flights of the older " poetical " books, Wisdom,
and you find the Greek sense of the paragraph fighting,
as it were, with the Hebrew balanced versicle, and a most
interesting Latin blend or mosaic resulting. 1 It is more
interesting still, no doubt, in the whole Septuagint, but
for much direct influence of that or of the Hebrew we
shall have to wait till the sixteenth century. All these
things influenced, of course, Anglo-Saxon homilists mtich,
and their Middle English followers (in so far as they had
a less accomplished though more accomplishable medium)
still more. Their practice provided exercises which were
to turn into really excellent work before very long; but
the range of these exercises was as yet not sufficiently
extensive, and the all-powerful consequence of the dose of
French-accented words was too small and had not had
time to work.

an( i O f But there was another influence which must also be

French prose, taken into consideration, though to take it " craves wary
walking " : and that is the influence of actual French prose
itself. This prose, it is well known, was not early ; it is
questionable whether there was any worth speaking of
fifty years before the Ancren Riwle was written. But
St. Bernard may have written prose sermons (and such
sermons must have been spoken long before) in the
middle of the twelfth century, and Maurice de Sully pretty
certainly wrote them in its later half. By the beginning
of the thirteenth and not long after the Riwle, Geoffroi de
Villehardouin had no difficulty in composing the admirable

1 I am, of course, aware that Biblical critics speak of the diction of
Wisdom as being ' ' unfettered by Hebrew idioms. " But there is certainly
Hebrew parallelism, and, I think, other Hebraic features.

in THE FORMATION OF PROSE RHYTHM 55

true romance which goes by his name ; and people were
soon busy " unrhyming " recent verse work. The director
of the anchoresses himself, as we have seen, thinks it
equally probable that they may have read English or
French books of devotion, and these must pretty surely
have been in prose. The first of the great French prose
Arthurian romances, even if not so old as they did seem to
most critics not long ago, and still seem to some, were not
to be long in coming. From the thirteenth century itself
onward there were undoubtedly French models before
English prose-writers, though even at the end of it even
at the beginning of the next the unripeness of the
language and its subjection to the general law of "verse
first, prose afterwards " make Robert of Gloucester and
Robert of Brunne choose the former rather than the
latter as their implement in the task of recovering History
for English. Manning's original had actually employed
French verse in preference to English prose. Let us
therefore see what French prose, in this its earliest stage,
had to offer to the new pupil for which it was doing so
much in verse, and which yet was showing so much
independence in its discipleship. But for this purpose we
had better start a new chapter, all the more so that almost
our sole predecessor, Mr. Earle, has relinquished Chaucer
and Mandeville, if not Wyclif, to " the beneficial effect of
French culture " it is French culture that has " improved
the habit of the native prose." ] Voyons I

1 Some readers will no doubt say, ' ' Where is Hampole ? " My copies of
Horstmann's Hampoliana would show a fair, and fairly long, acquaintance
with him. But the difficulties of dates and personalities are great ; and I
doubt whether, in prose, anything attributable to him with any certainty
would do us much good. The general remarks of this chapter apply, though
there are beautiful passages.

CHAPTER IV

FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY

English made a school language The four prosemen of the late
fourteenth century Wyclif The Tracts and Sermons The
translation of the Bible Trevisa Sir John Mandeville
Chaucer His various prose pieces Their somewhat neglected
importance The Parson's Tale The Tale oj Melibee Its
blank verse The Astrolabe The Boethius The fifteenth
century Its real importance Pecock and the Represser
His syntax His compound equivalents The Paston Letters
Malory His prose and the earlier verse Morte Guinevere's
last meeting with Lancelot The Lancelot dirge The Throw-
ing of Excalibur His devices His excellence a rather lonely
one Berners Style of his romance translations And contrast
of their Prefaces Fisher.

English made THE historical circumstances which helped, if they did
language not w ^oHy cause, the second stage of Middle English
Literature, and thereby produced, in effect, the first stage
of Modern, are, or ought to be, well known. Mere
political history the severance of England and France
as kingdoms, and the greater and greater Anglification x
of the kings and nobles of England had much to do with
it. Social and educational changes had perhaps not a
little. The famous passage 2 of John of Trevisa himself

1 It is doubted, seemingly on good grounds, whether Richard Coeur de
Lion knew any English at all ; and Jocelyn of Brakelonde in the passage
noted above (p. 44) seems to be rather more surprised that Abbot Samson
could read English than that he could speak it. In fact, it would be not a
little interesting to know what English books Samson did read and could
have had to read.

2 Whether part of this is repeated from others does not matter ; but the
text should be given, from Morris and Skeat's Specimens :

" Pys manertf was moche y-vsed to- fore ]>e furste moreyn, & ys seethe somdel

CHAP, iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 57

one of the remarkable group of English prose-writers who
adorn the latter part of the fourteenth century explains
these latter in all detail the disuse, about the time of the
Black Death, of the older practice of employing French
as the medium of teaching and translation in schools, and
the substitution for it of English, wherewith is associated,
and should be handed down for honour to all ages, the
name of John Cornwall, schoolmaster.

That this might or must, in itself, stimulate writing in
English for ordinary purposes may be self-evident ; but
some people may be not unreasonably inclined to ask
whether it would not rather repress than stimulate that
further blending of Romance and Teutonic vocabulary
which has been repeatedly pointed out as being the
indispensable preliminary to real accomplishment in the
language. A little thought, however, will show that this
is a mistake that the wider range of subjects dealt with
necessitated a wider vocabulary, and that English, freed
from its inferior position, was sure to anglicise the
numerous French words that it was forced to borrow.

The quartette above referred to, and composed, besides The four
Chaucer and Trevisa, of Wyclif and of the persona (if not t p h r s ^ e en of
personality) of " Sir John Mandeville," were all, for fourteenth
literary purposes, so nearly contemporary that it does not wyciifT"
matter which is taken first as far as chronology goes. In
point of subject and perhaps of date, though not of literary

ychaunged. For lohan Cornwal, a mayste^ of gramere, chayngede {>e lore in

gramtfr-scole, & construccion of Freynsch in-to Englysch ; & Richard Pencrych

lurnede J>at manere techyng of hym, & o]>er men of Pencrych ; so ]>at now, ]>e '

3er of oure Lord a J)ousond )>re hondred foure score & fyue, of {>e secunde kyng

Richard after ]>e conquest nyne, in al }>e grains- scoles of Engelond childern

leue)> Frensch & construe)) & lurne)) an Englysch, and habbe|> Iper-by avauntage -^

in on syde & desavauntage yn anojw ; here avauntage ys, ]>at a lurne)) here

granw yn lasse tyme Jjan childern wer ywoned to do disavauntage ys, ]>at

now childern of gram^r-scole conne]> no more Frensch J)an can here lift heele, ,

& f>at ys harm for ham, & a scholle passe ]>e se & trauayle in strange londes, &

in meny caas also. Also gentil men habbe}> now moche yleft for to teche hertf

childern Frensch. Hyt seme]) a gret wondwr hou3 Englysch, ]>at ys ]>e bur))-

tonge of Englysch men & here oune longage & tonge, ys so dyuers of soun in

Jris ylond ; & ]>e longage of Normandy ys co/wlyng of &-no)>er lond, & haj) on

maner soun among al men Jwt spekej) hyt ary3t in Engelond. Nopeles ]>er ys

as meny dyuers maner Frensch yn J)e rem of Fraunce as ys dyuers manere

Englysch in ]>e rem of Engelond."

58 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

importance, Wyclif may have precedence. He deserves,
however, the less notice, because he did not write his
purely philosophical works in English, and because the
works which he did write in English were mainly of the
same class as those which we considered in the last
chapter, though a little more popularly scholastic in style.
To call him " the first writer of English prose " is merely
an unconscious aposiopesis, and an equally unconscious
confession of ignorance. If there be added to it, " of
whom the writer or speaker ever heard," it might, no
doubt, be admitted pro tanto. The tracts 1 attributed to,
and certainly in some cases written by, Wyclif show, as
one might expect, a certain advance in facility of handling,
and, as one would expect, a certain greater advance still in
violence. All bad language has a positive tendency to
vivacity, though also to monotony. I do not know
whether any German or English " enumerator " has ever
counted the number of times the word " cursed " occurs in
Wyclifs tracts. And the abundance, enthusiasm, and
popularity of Wyclifs wandering preachers must have
done something for our speech. But " father of English
prose " is, as applied to him, one of the silliest of these
usually silly expressions, and is perhaps most frequent in
the mouths of those who also consider him and perhaps
really mean by it " father of English Protestantism."
However, from a person with such a reputation, if not
such a record, some specimen should doubtless be given,
especially as he might, without any absurdity, be called
father of English philosophical prose, even with the caution
above. Here is a passage of an argumentative kind : 2

Nisi granum frumenti. JOHN xii. 24.

The Tracts In this short Gospel be doubts, both of conscience and of other.

and Sermons. First philosophers doubt, whether (the) seed loseth his form when
it is made a new thing, as the Gospel speaketh here ; and some
men think nay, for sith the same quantity or quality or virtue

1 Select English Works of Wyclif, 3 vols. (1869-1871), ed. T. Arnold.
Wyclifs English Works [not included in the above], ed. Matthew (E.E.T.S.).

2 From this point onwards, with a few exceptions, the extracts are
modernised in spelling, on the principle adopted in Sir H. Craik's Selections
(v. Preface).

iv FROM CHA UCER TO MALOR Y 59

that was first in seed, liveth after in the fruit, as a child is often
like to his father or to his mother, or else to his eld father, after
that the virtue lasteth, and sith all these be accidents, that may
not dwell without subject, it seemeth that the same body is first
seed and after fruit, and thus it may oft change from seed to fruit
and again. Here many cleped philosophers glaver [clover, chatter\
diversely ; but in this matter God's law speaketh thus, as did eld
clerks, that the substance of a body is before that it be seed, and
now fruit and now seed, and now quick and now dead. And thus
many forms must be together in one thing, and specially when the
parts of that thing be meddled together ; and thus the substance of
a body is now of one kind and now of another. And so both these
accidents, quality and quantity, must dwell in the same substance,
all if it be changed in kinds, and thus this same thing that is now
a wheat corn shall be dead and turn to grass, and after to many
corns. But variance in words in this matter falleth to clerks, and
showing of equivocation, the which is more ready in Latin ; but
it is enough to us to put, that the same substance is now quick
and now dead, and now seed and now fruit ; and so that substance
that is now a wheat corn must needs die before that it is made
grass, and sith be made an whole ear. And thus speaketh holy
writ and no man can disprove it. Error of freres in this matter is
not here to rehearse, for it is enough to tell how they err in belief.

This, of course, is very far from contemptible ; indeed,
it is distinctly good. Still, we can as distinctly perceive
the man thinking in Latin and translating as closely as
he can. Even the English order he does not always
keep, as in the last sentence, " Error of freres," etc.
" The which is more ready in Latin " is a phrase of
further reach than its author intended.

If any one wishes to appreciate further the value of
the translations of the Bible by Wyclif and his followers *
as regards English prose style and rhythm, the process
is facilitated for him by Bosworth's parallel edition of
the Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Wyclifian Gospels, with
Tyndale's to fill the fourth place. The enormous advance
made by the latter must be, in fairness, postponed till
we come to its luckless author ; and with Ulphilas we

1 The distribution of the work between Wyclif, Hereford, Purvey, etc.,
would, in any case, hardly concern us much ; but as the gospels are almost
item. con. attributed to the Master himself, it becomes practically irrelevant.
But Purvey did certainly improve on that master's rhythm. The great edition
of Forshall and Madden must, of course, be consulted by any one who wants to
investigate the subject ; but there are excellent specimens in Morris and Skeat,
the latter of whom has also reprinted Job and the Psalms (Clarendon Press).

60 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

have nothing to do. But I have inserted the Vulgate,
from which, beyond all question, the Wyclifian version is
a remarkably uninspired (or ^-inspired) but direct and
pretty slavish version, distinctly inferior to the Anglo-
Saxon. This is how the three give the Parable of the
Sower, St. Luke viii. 5-8 :

The trans- Anglo-Saxon. Sum man his sded sedw. Dd he Saet seow, sum
lation of the f eo u w jg g one we g ? an( j we ar]? fortreden, and heofones fugulas hit
frtaeon.

And sum feoll ofer Saene stan, and .hit forscranc, foroam oe hit
wsetan naefde.

And sum feoll on 5a }x>rnas, and 5a ]?ornas . . . hyt forbrysmodon.
And sum feoll on gode eorban, and worhte hundfealdne wsestm.
Dd clypode he and cwse]?, Gehyre, se Se earan haebbe.

Vulgate. Exiit qui seminat, seminare semen suum ; et dum
seminat, aliud cecidit secus viam, et conculcatum est, et volucres
coeli comederunt illud.

Et aliud cecidit supra petram ; et natum aruit quia non habebat
humorem.

Et aliud cecidit inter spinas ; et simul exortae spinae suffocaverunt
illud.

Et aliud cecidit in terram bonam ; et ortum fecit fructum
centuplum. Haec dicens clamabat, " Qui habet aures audiendi,
audiat."

Wyclif. He that sowith, 3ede out for to sowe his seed. And
the while he sowith, sum felde by sydis the weye, and was defoulid,
and briddis of the eyr eeten it.

And another felde doun on a stoon, and it sprungen vp dryede,
for it hadde not moisture.

And anothir felde doun among thornes, and the thornes sprungen
vp to gidere strangliden it.

And another felde doun in to good erthe, and it sprungen vp
made an hundrid foold fruit. He seyinge thes thingis criede, He
that hath eeris of heeringe, heere he.

This last is " the vernacular " with a vengeance a
mere slavish rendering, of word for word and construction
for construction, out of the Latin. The man does not
see the awkwardness, in the English context, of " he that
soweth," and it never enters into his head that if you
must keep this Latin, " There has gone out he who
soweth " will be the thing. So also he does not dare
to get out of the tense of seminat, as the Anglo-Saxon
translator had done, and as Tyndale and his followers

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 61

did later. " Defoulid " is interesting as a word, because
it exhibits the confusion between the English " foul " (to
" dirty ") and the French " fouler " (to " tread under foot ") ;
but for that reason it lacks the vividness of " fortreden "
and " conculcatum " and our later English, and gives a
weaker idea. The intrusive and suspended participles,
" sprungen up," are ugly Latin aliens, but Wyclif or his
man had not the sense to avoid them as his Old English
predecessor and his Tudor follower had. The whole thing
misses fire ; and the only part that has a satisfactory
rhythm is the first verse, which itself is not superexcellent.
A much better example is to be found in the Sermons
paraphrase of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But
those who care to do so should compare it with the
actual (and far inferior) translation, to be found most
easily in Bagster's English Hexapla (London, 1841), or in
Bosworth and Waring's four- version Gospels, 3rd edition
(London, 1888).

Luke saith that Christ told how a man had two sons ; and the
younger of them said unto his father, Father, give me a portion
of the substance that falleth me. And the father de-parted him his
goods. And soon after this young son gathered all that fell to him,
and went forth in pilgrimage into a far country ; and there he wasted
his goods, living in lechery. And after that he had ended all
his goods, there fell a great hunger in that land, and he began to
be needy. And he went out and cleaved to one of the citizens of
that country, and this citizen sent him into his town to keep swine.
And this son coveted to fill his belly with these holes ["hulls,"
"^husks "] that the hogs eat, and no man gave him. And he,
turning again, said, How many hinds in my father's house be full
of loaves, and I perish here for hunger. I shall rise, and go to my
father, and say to him, Father, I have sinned in Heaven and before
thee ; now I am not worthy to be cleped thy son, make me as one
of thy hinds. And he rose and came to his father. And yet
when he was far, his father saw him, and was moved by mercy,
and running against his son, fell on his neck and kissed him.
And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned in Heaven and
before thee ; now I am not worthy to be cleped thy son. And
the father said to his servants anon, Bring ye forth the first stole,
and clothe ye him, and give ye a ring in his hand, and shoon
upon his feet. And bring ye a fat calf, and slay him, and eat we,
and feed us ; for this son of mine was dead, and is quickened
again, and he was perished, and is found. And they began to
feed him. And his elder son was in the field ; and when he came

62 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and was nigh the house, he heard a symphony and other noise of
minstrelsy. And this elder son cleped one of the servants, and
asked what were these things. And he said to him, Thy brother
is come, and thy father hath slain a fat calf, for he hath received
him safe. But this elder son had disdain and would not come in ;
therefore, his father went out, and began to pray him. And he
answered, and said to his father, Lo, so many years I serve to
thee, I passed never thy mandement ; and thou gavest me never
a kid, for to feed me with my friends. But after that he, this thy
son hath murthered his goods with hooris is come, thou hast
killed to him a fat calf. And the father said to him, Son, thou
art ever more with me, and all my goods be thine. But it was
need to eat and to make merry, for he this thy brother was dead,
and liveth again ; he was perished, and is found.

This is, of course, excellent ; but its excellence is due
to the fact that the writer has not merely kept as close
as possible to the Vulgate order, but has also availed
himself of the old English style of narrative plainness eo
often noted.

Trevisa. Trevisa is not much more of a definite " man of
letters " than Wyclif, perhaps not so much ; but he is of
greater importance in the history of prose style, and so (to
a lesser degree) in that of prose rhythm, because of his
important rehabilitation of English as a vehicle of prose
history. When Robert Manning, at the beginning of the
century, followed his namesake of Gloucester in restoring
the language as a medium of historical communication,
he also confined himself to verse ; when Trevisa towards
the end translates Higden, he ventures prose. Nor is his
matter of the bare chronicle kind. He finds or makes
occasion for discussion of the products of the country,
of its dialects, of such things as the educational changes
referred to above : and all this not only enables but obliges
him to use a considerable number of new words. These
words he arranges in good, straightforward fashion, but
without any special character in its ordonnance or rhythm.
Yet history will in time, and no long time, take care to
make these things also her own. 1

Sir John But when we turn from Wyclif and Trevisa to Chaucer

Mandeville.

1 It does not seem necessary to give a second example after that provided
earlier (v. sup. pp. 56, 57).

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 63

and Mandeville, then, once more, in the ever happy words
of that beloved physician and good Jacobite John Byrom,
" God bless us all ! it's quite another thing ! " We shall
finish with Chaucer, because, though his prose work may
not be attractive to the general, it is curiously various in
character and subject, and has, as it seems to the present
writer, been strangely undervalued as prose. Nobody
whose opinion is good for anything has ever undervalued
Mandeville as a writer. But, even as a writer, the atten-
tion which has been paid to him has too often been
diverted unduly to his matter, and to questions connected
with it which have for us absolutely no importance what-
ever. The sources of the compilation (as it pretty clearly
is) concern us not in the very least. The identity of the
compiler concerns us, if it were possible, less. That it
was originally written in French or Latin (probably
French), and that our " Mandeville," though purporting
to come from an English writer, is a mere translation,
matters, if at all, as a minus-quantity in formidable in-
feriority to zero. Even if there had been a real English
Sir John, and if he wrote (as apparently somebody did)
before or about the middle of the fourteenth century, he
would have almost certainly written in French or Latin,
and all our English prose of the later part is more or less
translation. Nor further, while giving all possible thanks
to Mr. Nicholson and to Colonel Yule, to Mr. Warner
and Mr. Pollard, need we trouble ourselves with " C "
and " E " and the probably older version which used to
be printed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries. The point for us is the way in which the
English translator or translators, whoever he was or who-
ever they were, " put on helmets of gold, to follow Sir
John," as the Danish ballad says.

There are not many more readable books for subject
and manner combined ; but the secrets of the manner are
neither numerous nor complicated. Except in the most
indirect fashion, there is no need to go to " French
culture " to explain the English Mandeville's method, even
if the book which we call by his name is itself a straight

64 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

translation from a French original. I have sometimes
felt inclined to get a rubber stamp manufactured with the
words "Translation of Form is Impossible," or something
of the kind, and impress it at hazard on the margins of
the " copy " of this book, that the printer may reproduce
it and keep it before readers constantly, in season and out
of season. On the whole, one may say that Sir John's
style is that of the better but simpler class of verse
romance dismetred, freed from rhyme, and from the
expletives which were the curse of rhymed verse romance
itself; but arranged for the most part in very short
sentences, introduced (exactly like those of a child telling
stories) by " And." I open a page of Halliwell's edition
absolutely at random : the sentences are not quite so
short as they are sometimes, but there are eleven of them
in thirty-three lines of large and widely spaced priet ;
ten of which begin with " and," and the eleventh with
" also." l Every now and then, especially when he comes
to the choice things the " Lady of the Land," the
" Watching of the Sparhawk," the " Origin of Roses," the
" Valley of the Devil's Head " he sometimes expands his
sentences and makes them slightly more periodic, but
they are still rather cumulative than anything more. He
is most elaborate (and not unequal to his elaboration) in
the account of the Great Cham's court, and of that of
Prester John. But the real secret of his extraordinary
success is his positive mastery of the fact that for certain
purposes, and among them pure narration and description,
a simple " writing down " of simple conversational style
is the best device possible. And this is how he does it :

And some men say that in the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter
of Hippocrates, in form and likeness of a great dragon, that is a
hundred fathom of length, as men say : for I have not seen her.
And they of the Isles call her, Lady of the Land. And she lieth
in an old castle, in a cave, and sheweth twice or 'thrice in the year.
And she doth no harm to no man, but if men do her harm. And
she was thus changed and transformed, from a fair damsel, into
likeness of a dragon, by a goddess, that was cleped Diana. And
men say, that she shall so endure in that form of a dragon, unto

1 Compare the Wyclifite "Prodigal Son."

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 65

the time that a knight come, that is so hardy, that dare come to
her and kiss her on the mouth : and then shall she turn again to
her own kind, and be a woman again. But after that she shall
not live long. And it is not long since, that a knight of the
Rhodes, that was hardy and doughty in arms, said that he would
kiss her. And when he was upon his courser, and went to the
castle, and entered into the cave, the dragon lift up her head
against him. And when the knight saw her in that form so
hideous and so horrible, he fled away. And the dragon bare the
knight upon a rock, maugre his head ; and from that rock she
cast him into the sea : and so was lost both horse and man. And
also a young man, that wist not of the dragon, went out of a ship,
and went through the Isle, till that he came to the castle, and
came in to the cave, and went so long till that he found a chamber,
and there he saw a damsel that combed her head, and looked in
a mirror ; and she had much treasure about her, and he trowed,
that she had been a common woman, that dwelled there to receive
men to folly. And he abode, till the damsel saw the shadow of
him in the mirror. And she turned her toward him, and asked
him, what he would. And he said, he would be her leman or
paramour. And she asked him if that he were a knight. And
he said, nay. And then she said that he might not be her leman :
but she bade him go again unto his fellows, and make him knight,
and come again upon the morrow, and she should come out of the
cave before him, and then come and kiss her on the mouth, and
have no dread ; " for I shall do thee no manner of harm, albeit
that thou see me in likeness of a dragon. For though thou see
me hideous and horrible to look on, I do thee to witness, that it
is made by enchantment. For without doubt, I am none other
than thou seest now, a woman ; and therefore dread thee nought.
And if thou kiss me, thou shall have all this treasure, and be my
lord, and lord also of all that isle." And he departed from her and
went to his fellows to ship, and let make him knight, and came
again upon the morrow, for to kiss this damsel. And when he
saw her come out of the cave, in form of a dragon, so hideous and
so horrible, he had so great dread, that he fled again to the ship ;
and she followed him. And when she saw that he turned not
again, she began to cry, as a thing that had much sorrow : and
then she turned again, into her cave ; and anon the knight died.
And since then, hitherwards, might no knight see her, but that he
died anon. But when a knight cometh, that is so hardy to kiss
her, he shall not die ; but he shall turn the damsel into her right
form and kindly shape, and he shall be lord of all the countries
and isles abovesaid.

It is hardly necessary to do more (in commenting on
this) than draw attention to the fact, natural at the time,
that this, beautiful as it is, is only half or, not to seem

66 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

ungrateful, let us say three-quarters prose. It is too
versicular too much separated into batches like Osstan,
and Blake, and Whitman. But the batches themselves
are fairly prose-harmonised, for there was as yet no verse
harmony sufficiently fixed upon English to impress itself
unduly, and so the development of prose was helped.

Chaucer. The way in which Chaucer's prose has usually been

treated is a curious illustration of one " way of the world "
generally. There is nothing of which what may be called
the communis non-sensus is more jealous than of success
by the same man in different lines ; and though this
tendency is to some extent neutralised by one of the
commonplaces which spring from common sense and
temper common nonsense to wit, that good poets are
generally good prose-writers it is not quite neutralised
thereby. And so we find a rather general tendency to
dismiss the prose wellings of the well undefiled as .a kind
of waste overflow to be apologised for, or at best patron-
isingly dismissed, before turning to the real thing, the
poetry. I shall endeavour to show that this is unjust,
and to indicate the nature and causes of the injustice.

His various There is, of course, no doubt that Chaucer's matter (by
se pieces, ^j^ a f ter a jj j ninety-nine people out of a hundred
judge) is, in all his prose pieces, comparatively uninter-
esting ; that it is glaringly so beside that of Mandeville
for the general reader ; and that it appeals to far fewer
specialists than that of Wyclif or even of Trevisa. The
De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius is a most inter-
esting book for the historical and comparative student of
literature ; but he is not exactly in a majority of the
population, and for him Chaucer's translation only shares
its interest with the original and the various other versions,
from Alfred's prose in the ninth century, and the unknown
Provencal's verse in the tenth, to Queen Elizabeth's
attempt in the sixteenth. After the very attractive
opening (which those who do know it generally know
at best in extract) the Astrolabe has no interest at all
for any but the small minority of scientific people who
are not Philistines enough to despise "science out of

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 67

date." The Tale of Melibee is, it must be admitted, of
a quite portentous dulness ; he who writes these words,
and who can read almost everything, doubts very much
whether, short as it is, he ever read it quite and straight
through until he braced himself up to the task for this
book. The Parson's Tale, though not quite so assommant
in substance, is not specially delightful ; and, but for its
autobiographic close, might seem, even to a diligent but
not quite expert reader, a mere belated example of the
stuff that we saw so plentifully in the last chapter. 1

But to students of prose rhythm, as of prose style Their some-
generally, these four books or booklets have or ought to
have, if they seem at times to have missed exercising it
in a most surprising manner distinct and strong attraction,
both in themselves and still more in reference to what
has gone before. Indeed it is probably this very ignorance
of what has gone before which has stood in the way of
appreciation, especially when we take it in connection with
the fact that there is, as has been said, next to nothing
in Chaucer's matter to attract readers. People have
accidentally or purposely taken up Mandeville, and been
caught at once by his charm ; they have gone to Wyclif
as to an important historical character, a " Protestant
hero," or something else unliterary, and have been sur-
prised to find his prose not so bad; but they generally
jump the prose Canterbury Tales, and they do not want
to know about Astrolabes, or to be consoled in the
Boethian manner.

Let us, for reasons which will appear of themselves, The Parson's
take the four works in reverse order, 2 chronologically Tale ~
speaking, and begin with the Parson's Tale. It is, as we
have said, on an exact line certainly with most, probably
with all, of the works reviewed in the last chapter that

1 The idea that in this tale Chaucer was burlesquing contemporaries or
predecessors is an unhappy one. His humour was wide-ranging, almost
ubiquitous ; but this was not a form that it was wont, or was likely, to take in
such matter.

2 Of course this order which is reversed is to some extent conjectural.
But it is founded on some warranty of scripture and more of reason which
cannot always be said of such things.

68 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

is to say, it is a more or less close translation of a French
or a Latin original, or of originals both Latin and French.
It has the same necessary abundance of scriptural
quotation to colour style as well as thought ; the same
prevalence of stock-subject and even stock-language ; the
same generally hortatory purpose distinguishing it from
narrative, discussion, description, and the other more
purely literary kinds. It could therefore hardly, unless
Chaucer had taken the bit in his teeth and become
mainly original in which case he would probably have
run away in verse, be other than a new exercise on the
old pattern. But I am much mistaken if that pattern is
not dealt with after a distinctly altered fashion. In the
first place, the contemporary, and beyond all reasonable
doubt the student to some extent, if not the disciple, oi
Wyclif, being at the same time the most expert man
alive at catching up and adapting literary forms and sug-
gestions, could hardly fail to exhibit something of that
logical-rhetorical connection of sentence and argument
which is perhaps Wyclif's one real contribution to English
prose. In the second, he could hardly fail himself to
contribute to his individual sentence that new " well-
girtness," that alert selection and disposition of vocabulary
and phrase, which did him such yeoman's service in his
verse. It is true that the application of these often leaves
the piece little better than a Wyclifite tract on one side,
or a pious but uninspired exhortation on the other ; but
(especially at beginning and end) they do raise it somewhat
out of this, while the genuineness of the coda might be
proved by style alone. But certainly if Chaucer had left
no prose save this Tale, the common estimate of him as a
prose writer would have little that is unjust in it.

In the coda itself occur two of those curious and
interesting waifs of blank verse

And many a song and many a lecherous lay,

And grant me grace of very penitence,

The Tale of which are to count for so much, and at the same time to
be of such dangerous account, in English prose henceforth.

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 69

But for more examples of these (as may be known to
some who do not know much else about the subject) we
must go backwards or onwards to the Tale of Melibee.
Gruesome thing as it is to read, it has this as a whole for
the mere casual observer, and still more for the student of
English prose, that in its beginning the author seems to
have got the swing of his " riding rhyme " so thoroughly
in his head that, though completely eschewing rhyme
itself, he cannot avoid metre. Why the Host, who, with
the apparent approval of the company, had cut short the
very promising and delightful parody of Sir Thopas,
should, even in deference to the courteous and piteous
request of the poet

And lat me tellen al my tale, I pree

have (apparently with the same approval) forborne all objec-
tion to, and even intimated some admiration of, Melibeus,
is one of the Chaucerian lesser mysteries, not unfathom-
able perhaps, but not to be solved in any one fashion
that can be taken as certain, and of course irrelevant
here.

In point of form, however (though it also presents
something of a problem there), the difficulty is not con-
siderable, though the fact is most interesting. The Tale
opens with a batch of almost exactly cut blank verse lines
with a sequence, that is to say, of rhythmical clauses
which is, almost as it stands, an example of Shakespearian
blank verse, lengthened and shortened at discretion, as
thus:

Upon | his wife, | that calljed was | Prudence, verse.

A daughter which | that call|ed was | Sophie.

Upon | a day | befell

That he for his | disport | is went | into

The field | es him | to play.

His wife | and eke | his daughter hath | he left

Inwith | his house, | of which | the dorjes werjenfast | yshette.

Three of | his old|e foes | it han | espyed . . .

After this the run is more broken, but the cadence
occurs scatteredly for some pages, as follows :

70 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

"What man," | quoth he, | "should of j his weep | ing stint

That hath | so great | a caus|e for | to weep.

And I could add dozens more, though they become less
numerous and less consecutive as the Tale goes on.

Now the explanation of this curious phenomenon is,
I think, not very far to seek. There is not the slightest
probability that it is the case of Layamon over again, only
in more surprising circumstances that Chaucer is really
trying to write blank verse a hundred and fifty years, or
so before Surrey, but cannot keep it up. Any logic which
could lead to such a conclusion would be the logic of Bake-
spearism. The only unrhymed verse he could have known
was alliterative and unmetred (a scheme which he dis-
tinctly eschewed) or else allied with totally different metres.

On the other hand, there is nothing more natural than
that a man who has an exquisite ear for rhythm, who has
been writing thousands and almost tens of thousands of
five-foot iambics for years past, and who is endeavouring
to write somewhat elaborate prose, should let it, perhaps
not at first quite consciously, run into the mould most
familiar to his brain. As he goes on he either finds the
attempt too troublesome or (which is on the whole more
likely) finds the effect disagreeable and drops it though,
as a matter of fact, he cannot avoid falling into it again
and again :

And this | same Sojlomon | saith af|terward

That by | the sorrow |ful vi|sage of | a man

The fool | correct | eth and | amend[e]th | himself.

Nor is Melibee deficient in interest, from the same point
of view, as a fairly elaborate attempt, though in the most
dreary material, to tell a tale in prose a thing which,
outside of the stories with which preachers embellished

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 71

their sermons, was not yet common. But its chief value
is as an experiment (conscious or unconscious) in an
obvious, a never entirely abandoned, but, on the whole, a
mistaken, attempt to adorn prose by calling in the direct
aid of metre. And when it is remembered that this
attempt of itself impresses and expresses the change of
generally dominant rhythm from trochaic to iambic, it
may seem hardly extravagant to call it immense in its
consequences and its symptomatic value. 1

The Astrolabe treatise could not give us very much, The
but it gives us something more than a little. As the
bulk of it consists in strictly practical and indeed
mechanical rules, put as shortly and simply as possible
for the instruction of a child, nothing but clearness could
or ought to be expected from its style ; and it is, no
doubt, translated pretty closely be it from Messahala,
be it from another. But, even as our first practical
scientific treatise by an accomplished man of letters in
English, it must count, and for the sake of its admirable
exordium it must count still more. This has escaped
notice less than almost any other piece of Chaucer's
prose ; and it certainly exhibits, more than any other,
that astonishing ease which distinguishes his verse. The
archaisms in it are exceedingly few, and the construction
flows with an urbane and well-bred mean between mere
colloquialism and elaborate rhetoric which reminds one of
the best French or English examples of the late seven-
teenth and earlier eighteenth century, but which does not
remind the present writer of any French prose before a
period considerably later than Chaucer's.

Little Lewis, my son, I have perceived well by certain evidences
thine ability to learn sciences touching numbers and proportions ;
and as well consider I thy busy prayer in special to learn the
treatise of the astrolabe. Then, forasmuch as a philosopher saith,
he wrappeth him in his friend that condescendeth to the rightful

1 It ought not to be lost sight of that Chaucer makes the same mistake
(naturally enough) that Surrey and all the early dramatic and other blank
versers made, that of keeping to the single-moulded line. The devices whereby
Mr. Ruskin used and almost abused blank verse in prose to no fatal effect, and
even to great advantage, were necessarily hidden from a first experimenter.

72 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

prayers of his friend, therefore have I given thee a sufficient astrolabe
as for our horizon, compounded after the latitude of Oxenford, upon
which by mediation of this little treatise, I purpose to teach thee a
certain number of conclusions appertaining to the same instrument.
I say a certain of conclusions, for three causes. The first cause is
this ; trust well that all the conclusions that have been found, or else
possibly might be found in so noble an instrument as an astrolabe,
be unknown perfectly to any mortal man in this region, as I suppose.
Another cause is this ; that soothly in any treatise of the astrolabe
that I have seen there be some conclusions that will not in all things
perform their behests. And some of them be too hard to thy
tender age of ten year to conceive.

The But by far the most interesting piece that Chaucer

tus ' has left for our purpose is his most considerable and very
probably his earliest the translation of the Boethian
Consolation of Philosophy. It happened, most fortunately,
that the original is a mosaic of verse and prose in alternate
instalments ; and more fortunately still, that Chaucer o*id
not attempt, with one external exception, 1 to translate the
metra into verse. Those who have regretted that he did
not have surely been most short-sighted. Translations of
verse in verse are, very frequently, not worth the paper
they are written on ; become of supreme value scarcely
once in a hundred years ; and in almost every case, when
written by a poet, take the place of something that would
have been of much greater value. But verses of the more
ambitious kind and the metra of Boethius are nearly
always that, and not seldom justify the ambition of their
writer necessitate, if they are not to be simply tortured
or travestied, a certain height of style in the prose which
is to render them. Now about 1380, shortly after which
date the English Boethius was probably composed, an
English Longinus might have overhauled all Middle
English prose writing without finding any " height of
style " anywhere. He must have gone back to Anglo-
Saxon and yElfric to find anything like that ; and the
sources of it, which had been open to ^Ifric, were now

closed to a writer of the modern tongue ; though much

1 The piece called "The Former Age," which, for the last half century,
has been included among the Minor Poems, and which is, in part at least, a
version of Bk. ii. Met. v.

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 73

more splendid and abundant springs were waiting for
him to tap them.

The extreme sensitiveness of ear to such cadences as
he knew, which we have noted in the Meliboeus, shows
itself at first in the Boethius, also and still more curiously.
At the close of the first metrum occurs what is * un-
doubtedly an echo of the elegiac metre of the original.
But this must have been simply an accidental retention
of rhythm in an ear abnormally gifted with the power not
merely of recognising but of recording it. That was only
the way not to do it.

But the way to do it was not far off; and Chaucer
soon struck into that way. My favourite example of his
proficiency has always been the Fifth Metrum of the
First Book, O stelliferi conditor orbis. The Latin and the
English appear side by side below, and will give a good
example of the manner in which Chaucer rises to the
difficulty of vocabulary. But the beautiful Quisquis
composite serenus aevo, which precedes it, has an English
representative which is even better for our purpose,
because it is, as a whole, worth studying by itself, and
not mainly as a translation.

stelliferi conditor orbis, O thou maker of the wheel
Qui perpetuo nixus solio that beareth the stars, which that
Rapido caelum turbine versas, art y-fastened to thy perdurable
Legemque pati sidera cogis, chair, and turnest the heaven
Ut nunc pleno lucida cornu with a ravishing sweigh, and
Solis fratris et obvia flammis constrainest the stars to suffer thy
Condat Stellas Luna minores. law ; so that the moon some time

shining with her full horns, with
all the beams of the sun her
brother, hideth the stars that be
less.

1 I do not wish to repeat the argument stated in Hist. Pros. i. pp. 8-10.

1 shall only say that the reproduction in

O ye, my friendes, what or whereto avaunted ye me to be weleful ?

For he that hath fallen stood not in stedfast degree,
of the rhythm of

Quid me felicem toties jactastis amici,

Qui cecidit stabili non erat ille gradu.

admits, to my mind, of no dispute. (The hexameters of the A.V., though
undoubted curiosities, are still purer accidents, needing no notice here. )

74 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Whoso | it be | that is clear | of virtue, | sad, | and well ordinal
of living, | that hath put | under foot | the proud words, j and looketh
upright | upon either fortune | he | may hold | his cheer | undis-
comfited. | The rage nor the menaces of the sea, commoving or
chasing upward heat from the bottom, ne shall not move that man ;
ne the unstable mountain that hight Vesevus, that writheth out
through his broken chiminees l smoking fire ; ne the way of thunder
light that is wont to smiten high towers, ne shall not move that man.
Whereto then, o wretches, dread ye tyrants that be wood and
felenous without any strength ? Hope after nothing nor dread
naught ; and so shalt thou disarm[en] the ire of this unmighty

The first of these indicates, it has been said, a fipe
choice of vocabulary and a command of stately phrase ;
but the second, as it seems to me, betrays something
higher and something more directly in a concatenation
with our enquiry. The hendecasyllabics of the original
are very good ; they show the power of that remarkable
metre for dignity as well as for the Catullian grace.
You might, with an ear so apt to catch an alien rhythm
as Chaucer's, keep it exactly as, with a single change of
word-place only, he does or could have done in

But Chaucer avoids this throughout, and substitutes
throughout a grave prose clause-and-sentence order which
need not fear comparison with things much later and
better furnished with patterns. Suggestions have, I
believe, been made that he was indebted to French
versions as well as to the Latin original for his translation ;
and as far as the mere construing goes I should think
it not unlikely. But (as I have already had, and shall
have, frequently to remind readers) French prose order
will give very little help indeed for English composition ;

1 Chimzhees in original, nearer French, and slightly varying, though not
really altering, the rhythm.

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 75

on the contrary, the more you keep it the worse your
translation will be, and the less you keep it the better.
Such a repetition of which there is no suggestion in the

Latin as " ne shall not move that man " may be regarded
from different points of view as an ornament, and as a
blemish ; and some might prefer " smoking fires " moved
back to a place before " through his," etc. But the last
sentence, as scanned and divided above, is, I venture to
think, a very fine English sentence indeed, and one of
which no English prose writer of the greater clans, from
Hooker to Cardinal Newman, need be ashamed ; while
the dochmiac for clause-ending in " undiscomfited " could
not have been surpassed if Chaucer had been " doing it on

purpose." " Hope | after nothing | nor dread | naught "
is similarly complete in its larger way. With such a
diploma-piece it is Chaucer who may claim the fatherhood
of English rhythmical prose, much more securely than
that of English metrical poetry. And I have begun the
process of regular foot-analysis with him accordingly.

The contribution to prose form thus made at the close The fifteenth
of the fourteenth century has, therefore, been somewhat ce
undervalued or misvalued generally; the much -abused
and belaboured fifteenth has had the blows and bad
language usually bestowed upon its poetry a little softened
in respect of its prose. Mr. Earle, always enthusiastic
when he saw his opportunity, perceived in it once more
" a great era of prose," " prose mature and excellent,"
" an elevated position in the history of English prose,"
" the second time [the tenth was the first] when the
language has reached what may be described as a
summit, a stage of perfection." I could only subscribe
to this in respect of Malory and (borrowing l a little from
the sixteenth) of part of Berners. But I should myself
describe it as an age of most various and important
development in prose, which was not in the least

1 This borrowing is, in fact, almost always made by literary historians,
for both prose and verse, in regard to Skelton and Hawes, as well as to
Berners and Fisher.

76 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Its real
importance.

Pecock and
the Represser.

" eclipsed," as Mr. Earle thought, by the prose of the
Renaissance, but, on the contrary, was a necessary stage
to that Renaissance prose itself. And, what is more,
the latter part of this stage was, to a great degree, what
we have never had since Old English, if then a
conscious one.

The widening and varying of the range and methods
of prose by its application to new subjects, which we
have seen beginning in the late fourteenth, now widens
and varies itself still more. In history the translation
(with a few original insets) of Trevisa is followed by a
series of really original or at least first-hand English
chroniclers, with Capgrave at their head, who, if they are
not yet historians, will teach their successors to be so.
The famous collection of the Paston Letters shows us
vernacular letter -writing one of the most powerful
instruments in the formation of general prose style in
full operation. The work of Sir John Fortescue intro-
duces to the same vernacular new subjects of the most
important kind law, what we may almost call political
economy, and their kindred matters. Above all, on the
serious side, we have the remarkable document one of
the most remarkable in the formal history of English
prose style of Pecock's Represser.

This book was written by an equally remarkable
person, whose faculty of making himself hated l was
probably not unconnected with a certain vigour and
originality of character, and who certainly was among
the most vigorous and original of writers in the older
English prose. The fact that his experiments were

1 That he was so at the time is certain. He has had vicissitudes since.
Although he attacked the Lollards, Foxe and other early Protestant writers
" took him up " as a victim of his brother bishops. When he came to be
thoroughly studied by an impartial editor, Babington, his levity of doctrine,
his self-seeking and other bad things, made themselves clear. ' But Mr.
James Gairdner rather champions him in his Paston Letters ; and I have seen
other recent attempts in the same way. He seems to me and I have paid
some attention to him to have been not unlike his later compatriot,
Archbishop Williams, a born "schemer" (Mr. S. R. Gardiner slipped the
word in his D.N.B. apology for Williams) and a very untrustworthy person
both in politics and religion, but one of great ability, in almost all ways, and
specially notable in English prose.

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 77

directed in the wrong way only gives him the greater
interest. The general principle of the Represser was to
carry the war into the enemy's country by using the
enemy's weapon. Wyclif, his immediate followers, and
the Lollards who carried his methods to furthest degrees
of exaggeration and extravagance, had employed the
vernacular, had " appealed to the people." But Wyclif,
who, though he could argue well enough, preferred, as was
natural, to argue in Latin for the most part, mainly
employed assertion and abuse in English ; and we may
be certain that the usual Lollard did this still more.
Now Pecock obviously wished to carry the whole
scholastic method of argument into English, and into
the service of his (at that time) dangerous attempt to
support authority by reason. In order to do this he
essayed the enormous task of transferring bodily the
argumentative style and method of the schoolmen, and
the technical terms of theology and philosophy, into the
vulgar tongue. The latter he effected by reviving the
Anglo-Saxon practice (which is sparingly observable
throughout the earlier Middle English period, but never
pursued on anything like his scale) of manufacturing
English compounds for those of Greek and Latin.
" Circumscription " is " about-writing " ; to " prevent " is
to " before-bar." But in the further part of his endeavour
he had to lift the elaborate Latin periodic clause and
sentence, with their intricate keyings and gearings of
accord between adjectives and substantives, relatives and
antecedents, nouns and verbs, into a language which had
already lost most of its inflexions, and was almost daily
losing more. Here is a passage or two :

Even as grammar and divinity be two diverse faculties and
cunnings, and therefore be unmeddled, and each of them hath his
proper to him bounds and marks, how far and no farther he shall
stretch himself upon matters, truths, and conclusions, and not to
entermete, neither entermeene, with any other faculty's bounds ;
and even as saddlery and tailory be two diverse faculties and
cunnings, and therefore be unmeddled, and each of them hath his
proper to him bounds and marks, how far and no farther he shall
stretch himself forth upon matters, truths, and conclusions, and

78 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

not intercommune with any other craft or faculty in conclusions
and truths : so it is that the faculty of the said moral philosophy
and the faculty of pure divinity, or the Holy Scripture, be two
diverse faculties, each of them having his proper to him bounds
and marks, and each of them having his proper to him truths and
conclusions to be grounded in him, as the before -set six first
conclusions shew.

Of which first principal conclusion thus proved followeth further
this corollary, that whenever and wherever in Holy Scripture, or
out of Holy Scripture, be written any point or any governance of
the said law of kind, it is more verily written in the book of man's
soul than in the outward book of parchment or of vellum ; and if
any seeming discord be betwixt the words written in the outward
book of Holy Scripture and the doom of reason, writ in man's
soul and heart, the words so written withoutforth ought be ex-
pounded and be interpreted and brought for to accord with the
doom of reason in thilk matter ; and the doom of reason ought
not for to be expounded, glazed, interpreted, and brought for to
accord with the said outward writing in Holy Scripture of the
Bible, or aughtwhere else out of the Bible. Forwhy, when ever
any matter is treated by it which is his ground, and by it which
is not his ground, it is more to trust to the treating which is made
thereof the ground than by the treating thereof by it which is
not thereof the ground ; and if thilk two treatings ought not
discord, it followeth that the treating done by it which is not the
ground ought to be made for to accord with the treating which is
made by it the ground. And therefore this corollary conclusion
must needs be true.

His syntax. It will, of course, be obvious to everybody that if this
example of Pecock's had been followed we should have
been in more than danger of falling into the same slough
of despond into which Germany fell some centuries later,
and from which she was scarcely extracted till our own
days by Heine, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Pecock's
propositions are all perfectly logical ; they are disposed
with all the art, though with none of the lightness, of a
Socratic-Platonic dialogue ; the repetitions are defensible,
as showing a clear determination to leave no loophole
open ; and the compound phrases like " proper-to-him "
(sibi proprium} are just and exact equivalents of the Latin
in which beyond doubt the Bishop was thinking as he
wrote. But the total result is simply ghastly, and it is
eminently un-English. As to any harmonious adjustment

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 79

of rhythm, or indeed any distinct rhythm at all, being got
out of such a' farrago of technicalities, it is obviously
impossible.

The curious Anglifications of compounds do not appear His compound
in these passages ; indeed, as is again obviously natural, equiv
they appear only now and then sporadically as occasion
requires them, though a very long list could be drawn
up at need. But they could hardly in any case be
improvements, and there is an important general objection
to them which may not be so obvious. As was pointed
out above, the nascent advantages of the new tongue were
already, and were to be still more, due to the mingling of
Teutonic and Romance elements, and to the different
rhythmical values which distinguished them. By surrender-
ing Greek, Latin, and French words for merely " Saxon "
equivalents you remain possessed of the Saxon word-
rhythm only. We shall meet the objection to naturalising
foreign words in English again and again ; in fact, it is
quite lively to-day among many respectable folk. But
there is no doubt that it is to this perpetual admission of
new blood to the naturalising of words, often with
anglicised forms and generally with anglicised pronuncia-
tion, yet retaining something of the balance, the colour,
the rhythmical value of the original tongue that English
owes its unmatched richness and variety. 1

Nevertheless though it may be quite certain that
Pecock's immediate object was merely to convey his
meaning, and that the means which he adopted would
have been imitated by English prose generally at the
peril of loss of all style, and to certain destruction of
harmonious rhythm his writings still bear testimony to
an unconscious exploration and prospecting in the realms
of prose itself.

1 I remember once startling, or rather horrifying, a foreign man of letters
by saying that a language could not have too many synonyms or quasi-
synonyms for expressing the same idea. And one of the subsidiary excellences
of this diversity is that each of these synonyms will bring its different
rhythmical and acoustic colour for use on the ear-palette. The excellent
Mason (v. App. II.) saw this already before the middle of the eighteenth
century. The ever unfortunate "Revisers" of the Bible did not see it,
towards the end of the nineteenth.

8o A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

How these writings can be described as " clear and
pointed in style," as they have been in the Dictionary of
National Biography, I profess myself humbly unable to
understand. It is quite true that there are sentences
which, to use a phrase of his own very context, " by great
cunning of preaching and by savoury uttering thereof"
might deserve such commendation. But again in the
same context occurs a sentence like this :

This is now said of me (God I take thereto into witness) for
harm which I have known come by default, and the unhaving and
the unknowing of this now said consideration, and for peril that
such harms should in time after here come, if of this consideration
no mention and warning were by me or by some other in writing
before made.

That is not absolutely despicable writing, but it is not
" clear and pointed " ; it is clumsy, and rather Latin than
English in general ordonnance. It is no shame to Pecock,
who would certainly have done much better later ; but it
should put him in his proper place and not out of it.
The Paston The special and direct interest of the famous Paston
Letters for our matter could not be great ; but they, like
the much duller stuff of Capgrave and others, still bear
indirectly upon it. The main interest and attraction of
the Letters themselves is that subtracting the large
amount of technical and documentary matter which could
not concern us they are genuine, direct, and unforced
utterances of private persons about their own affairs.
The alloy, if not of actual insincerity and " faking," yet
of a certain side-eye on a possible reader who is not the
person addressed an alloy present in nearly all the most
famous collections of letter - writing except perhaps
Cowper's, 1 is nowhere and could not possibly be anywhere
in them. Even such a man as William Botoner, Worcester
or Wyrcester 2 chronicler, and, as we should now put it,
professional man of letters, with the hankering after

1 And yet a poet so inevitably writes urbi et orbi, that some publicaturience
may unconsciously exist even in his familiar prose.

2 Not "William 0/" Worcester," as he is sometimes improperly called. In
that order of designation he was "William of Bristol."

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 81

French literature which is characteristic of the time, a
good liberal education, and what we may call fair scholar-
ship, does not " write book " any more than the notable
and really admirable Margaret Paston herself, though he
spells a little less wildly. But it is of almost the first im-
portance to remember that, at a very short time previously,
it is of the highest improbability that even one of these
Letters would have been written in English at all. They
would have been in French (as a few of them actually
are) or in Latin, as almost equally private letters of
Ascham's, for some part of his life, are nearly a century
later. And this handling " of all things and some others "
again in the written vernacular, could not but exercise its
effect on style, which is our wider, and prose -rhythm,
which is our narrower, subject.

In Pecock's younger contemporary, Caxton, on the
other hand, we find, perhaps for the first time, the
conscious research of style. Again and again he tells us
how, in that process of study and translation through
which he went before devoting himself to the great accom-
plishment of popularising, through the printing-press,
literature of the most diverse kinds in English, he had
been struck and daunted by the inferiority of his English
instrument, the difficulty of getting an adequate effect
out of it, and the superiority of the " fair language " of
French. Except his production (how Heaven knows) of
Malory, and his reproduction of Chaucer, nothing that
Caxton printed is of the first value intrinsically. But all
deserves the benefit of the definition of Goethe as to the
duty of the scholar, that " if he cannot accomplish he
shall exercise himself." And here at last he has the
further benefit of our knowledge, due to himself, that he
was exercising himself consciously.

It would not be exactly critical to say that these pains
of Caxton's own brought him great profit as a translator
from the point of view of style, or largely increased the
treasury and pattern-storehouse of accomplished English
prose. But they certainly show more than decent
accomplishment ; and by the variety of their subjects

82 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

they must have exercised that subtle influence which has
been so much dwelt on, while their direct evidence of
conscious rhetorical study is invaluable. Moreover, for
one thing that he did, if only ministerially, Caxton cannot
be thanked too much or set too high. For the position
which the fifteenth century (with its, in literature, necessary
annexe of the first quarter or third of the sixteenth) bears
in the history of English prose, is due to three persons
Malory, Fisher, and Berners ; and the greatest of these
three is Malory ; and, so far as investigation has hitherto
gone, we should have known nothing of Malory but
for Caxton which thing, if the sins of printers and
publishers were twenty times as great even as they
seemed to the poet Campbell or to my late friend Sir
Walter Besant, let it utterly cancel and wash them
away.

Malory. I do not know (or at least remember) who the person
of genius was who first announced to the world that
Malory was " a compiler." The statement is literally
quite true (we may even surrender the Beaumains part
and wish the receivers joy of it) in a certain lower sense, and
exquisitely absurd as well as positively false in a higher.
But it does not directly concern us. The point is that this
compilator compilans conipilative in compilationibus com-
pilandis has, somehow or other, supplied a mortar of style
and a design of word-architecture for his brute material
of borrowed brick or stone, which is not only miraculous,
but, in the nature even of miraculous things, uncompilable
from any predecessor. Even if that single " French
book " which some have used against him from his own
expressions, were to turn up, as it has never turned up
yet, his benefit of clergy would still remain to him, for
no French originals will give English clerkship of this
kind and force. Moreover, as shall be more fully shown
and illustrated presently, he had certainly English as well
as French originals before him, and how he dealt with
one at least of these we can show confidently, and as
completely as if we had been present in Sir Thomas's
scriptorium, in the ninth year of the reign of King

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 83

Edward the Fourth, and he had kindly told us all
about it. 1

" Original " in the only sense that imports to us, His prose and
Malory can have had none except perhaps the unknown ^^Morte.
translator or author of " Mandeville," on whom he has
enormously improved. The idee mere of both styles an
idea of which in all probability both writers, and the
earlier almost certainly, were quite unconscious is the
" metring " without " #whythming " of the best kind of *
romance style, with its easy flow, its short and uncompli-
cated sentences, and its picturesque stock phrases freed
from verse- or rhyme -expletive and mere catchword.
But the process, in Malory's case, had better be illustrated
without further delay by comparison of the two passages
cited above, from Malory's Morte itself and the verse
Morte, which is almost certainly of the first half of the
century if not earlier, and the verbal identities in part of
which cannot be mere coincidence.

Abbess, to you I knowlache here, Through this man and me Guinevere's

That throw this elke man and me, hath all this war been wrought, la . st meeting

(For we to-gedyr han loved us and the death of the most noblest Wlth Lancelot -

dere), knights of the world ; for through

All this sorrowful war hath be ; our love that we have loved to-

My lord is slain that had no pere, gether is my most noble lord

And many a doughty knight and slain. Therefore, Sir Launcelot,

free. wit thou well I am set in such a

plight to get my soul's health ;

Ysett I am in suche a place, and yet I trust, through God's

1 It is difficult, or rather impossible, for those who have scant shelf-room
and a shallow purse to afford themselves many editions of the same book.
But as the Morte riP Arthur is, taking various sorts and elements of greatness
together, about the greatest book in Middle and early Modern English prose
next to the Authorised Version, I have tried to provide myself with most of
the modern editions, and have Southey's quartos ; the two little beloved but
badly printed sets (1816) in two and three duodecimos respectively ; Wright's
of 1858 ; Sir Edward Strachey's "Globe" edition of ten years later (rather
unnecessarily castrated and modernised, but undoubtedly good for general
use) ; Dr. Sommer's of 1889, giving a careful reproduction, scarcely elsewhere
to be found, of the original Caxton text, a great deal of learned apparatus
and Quellenforschung, and an interesting essay by Mr. Lang ; and that with
Sir John Rhys' introduction and Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations (2 vols.
4to, 1894). Of the variations in text the only considerable one is the
"Placebo and Dirige" 1 on Lancelot, which first appeared in Wynkyn de
Worde's edition of 1529, which is, however magnificent, rather more
rhetorical than the rest, and which may be later.

84 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

My sowl& heal I will abide
Telle God send[e] me some

grace,
Through mercy of his woundes

wide,

After to have a sight of his face
At Doomsday on his right side :
Therefore, Sir Lancelot du Lake,
For my love I now thee pray
My company thou aye forsake,
And to thy kingdom thou take

thy way,
And keep thy realm from war

and wrack,
And take a wife with her to play ;

Unto God I pray, almighty king,
He give you together joy and
bliss. 1

grace, that after my death to
have a sight of the blessed face
of Christ, and at doomsday to
sit on his right side, for as sin-
ful as ever I was are saints in
heaven. Therefore, Sir Launce-
lot, I require thee and beseech
thee heartily, for all the love
that ever was betwixt us, that
thou never see me more in the
visage ; and I command thee on
God's behalf, that thou forsake my
company, and to thy kingdom
thou turn again and keep well
thy realm from war and wrack.
For as well as I have loved thee,
mine heart will not serve me to
see thee ; for through thee and
me is the flower of kings and
knights destroyed. Therefore,
Sir Launcelot, go to thy realm,
and there take thee a wife, and
live with her with joy and bliss,
and I pray thee heartily pray for
me to our Lord, that I may
amend my misliving.

Now here, it will be observed, the verse is emphatic-
ally " no great shakes." It is not so bad as the con-
temporary exercitations of the abominable Herry [sic]
Lonelich or Lovelich ; but it has a great deal of the ever-
recurring expletive, the flat and nerveless phrase, and
the slipshod rather than flowing movement of the worst
verse-romances. Still, it gives a fair " canvas," and this
Sir Thomas takes, not even disdaining the retention of a
few brighter stitches of his predecessor's, which he patches
in, not fearing but welcoming, and mustering them into
a distinct prose rhythm treating them, in fact, just as

1 Morte <f Arthur, Harl. 2252 ; ed. Furnivall (London and Cambridge,
1864), p. 148. It had been printed earlier (1819) for the Roxburghe Club,
and has been reprinted since (1903) by the E.E.T.S. with such alterations
as the separation of the text into octaves. The editor thinks that the
parallels with Malory are only such as must occur when two writers "are
following closely the same original." If this is the case, I know nothing of
criticism. It ought, however, perhaps, to be added that there are curious
differences of opinion as to the value of the poem itself. I cannot rank it
high ; but it is certainly better than Lonelich.

FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY

Ruskin does his doses of blank verse. And so, out of
the substance and the general procession of the verse, he has
woven a quite new rhythm, accompanying and modulating
graceful and almost majestic prose of the best type.
There had been nothing in English prose before like the
Queen's speech here ; and it had been manufactured, as
genius manufactures, out of a very commonplace web of
English verse.

The Lancelot dirge, as has been said, may be a later The Lancelot
composition, at a time when (v. inf.} definite rhetorical irge<
devices were attempted. It has at any rate no parallel
in the verse, though this deals with the actual scene.
But that, more famous than either of them, of the
" throwing of Excalibur," with its immensely interesting
addition of Tennyson's re-versing from Malory himself,
requires more notice.

The kynge tornyd hym there he

stode
To syr Bedwere, vf_yt/i wordys

kene,
" Have Excalaber, my swerd

good,

A better brond was neuyr sene,
Go, Caste it in the salt flode,
And thou shalt se wonder, as I

wene,

hye the faste, for crosse on Rode
And telle me what thou hast

ther sene."
The knyght was bothe hende

and free ;
To save that swerd he was fulle

glad,
And thought, whethyr I better

bee

yif neuyr man it After had ;
And I it caste in to the see,
Off mold was neuyr man so mad.
The swerd he hyd vndyr A tree,
And sayd, "syr, I ded as ye me

bad."
" What saw thow there ? " than

sayd the kynge,
" Telle me now, yiff thow can ; "

Therefore, said Arthur, take The Throwing
thou Excalibur, my good sword, of Excalibur.
and go with it to yonder water
side, and when thou comest
there, I charge thee throw my
sword in that water, and come
again, and tell me what thou
there seest. My lord, said
Bedivere, your commandment
shall be done, and lightly bring
you word again. So Sir Bedivere
departed, and by the way he be-
held that noble sword, that the
pommel and haft were all of
precious stones, and then he
said to himself, If I throw this
rich sword in the water, thereof
shall never come good, but harm
and loss. And then Sir Bedi-
vere hid Excalibur under a tree.
And as soon as he might he
came again unto the king, and
said he had been at the water,
and had thrown the sword into
the water. What sawest thou
there ? said the king. Sir, he
said, I saw nothing but waves
and winds. That is untruly

86 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

" Series syr," he sayd, " nothynge
But watres depe, And wawes

wanne."
" A, now thou haste broke my

byddynge !
Why haste thou do so, thow

false man ?
A-nother bode thou muste me

brynge."
Thanne careffully the knyght

forthe Ranne,
And thought the swerd yit he

wold hyde,
And keste the scauberke in the

flode,
" Yif Any Aventurs shalte be-

tyde,
There - by shalte I se tokenys

goode."

In-to the see hee lette the scau-
berke glyde ;
A whyle on the land hee there

stode ;
Than to the kynge he wente

that tyde
And sayd, " syr, it is done by

the Rode."

" Saw thow Any wondres more ?"
" Sertys syr, I saw nought."
" A ! false traytor," he sayd

thore,
"Twyse thou haste me treson

wroght ;

That shalk thow rew sely sore,
And be thou bold it shalbe

bought."
The knyght than cryed, " lord,

thyn ore,"
And to the swerd[<F| sone he

sought.
Syr bedwere saw that bote was

beste,

And to the good swerde he wente ;
In-to the see he hyt keste ;
Than myght he see what that it

mente ;
There cam An hand, wyt^-outen

Reste,

said of thee, said the king ;
therefore go thou lightly again,
and do my command as thou
art to me lief and dear, spare
not, but throw it in. Then Sir
Bedivere returned again, and
took the sword in his hand ;
and then him thought sin and
shame to throw away that noble
sword ; and so eft he hid the
sword, and returned again, and
told to the king that he had
been at the water, and done his
commandment. What saw thou
there ? said the king. Sir, he
said, I saw nothing but the
waters wap and the waves wan.
Ah traitor, untrue, said king
Arthur, now hast thou betrayed
me twice. Who would haVe
wend that thou that hast been
to me so lief and dear, and thou
art named a noble knight, and
would betray me for the riches
of the sword. But now go again
lightly, for thy long tarrying
putteth me in great jeopardy of
my life, for I have taken cold.
And but if thou do now as I bid
thee, if ever I may see thee, I
shall slay thee with mine own
hands, for thou wouldest for my
rich sword see me dead. Then
Sir Bedivere departed, and went
to the sword, and lightly took it
up, and went to the water side,
and there he bound the girdle
about the hilts, and then he
threw the sword as far into the
water as he might, and there
came an arm and an hand above
the water, and met it, and caught
it, and so shook it tfirice and
brandished, and then vanished
away the hand with the sword
in the water. So Sir Bedivere
came again to the king, and
told him what he saw. Alas,

FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY

Oute of the water, And feyre it

hente,
And brandysshyd As it shuld

braste,
And sythe, as gleme, A-way it

glente.
To the kynge A-gayne wente

he thare
And sayd, " leve syr, I saw An

hand ;
Oute of the water it cam Alk

bare,
And thryse brandysshyd that

Ryche brande."
" helpe me sone that I ware

there."

he lede hys lord vnto that stronde ;
A ryche shippe wylh maste And

ore,

FulL? of ladyes there they fonde.
The ladyes, that were feyre and

Free,
Curteysly the kynge gan they

fonge,
And one, that bryghtest was of

blee,

Wepyd sore, and handys wrange,
" Broder," she sayd, " wo ys me ;
Fro lechyng hastow be to longe,
I wote that gretely greuyth me,
For thy paynes Ar full* stronge."
The knyght kest A rewfulte

rowne,
There he stode, sore and

vnsownde,
And say, "lord, whedyr Ar ye

bowne,
Alias, whedyr wylk ye fro me

fownde ? "
The kynge spake wyt/z A sory

sowne,

" I wylle wende A lytelk stownde
In to the vale of Avelovne,
A whyle to hele me of my

wounde."

We may indeed note here how this " compiler " suc-
ceeded, as to his mere matter, in compiling out Bedivere's

said the king, help me hence,
for I dread me I have tarried
over long. Then Sir Bedivere
took the king upon his back,
and so went with him to that
water side. And when they
were at the water side, even fast
by the bank hoved a little barge,
with many fair ladies in it, and
among them all was a queen,
and all they had black hoods,
and all they wept and shrieked
when they saw king Arthur.
Now put me into the barge, said
the king : and so he did softly.
And there received him three
queens with great mourning, and
so they set him down, and in
one of their laps king Arthur
laid his head, and then that
queen said, Ah, dear brother,
why have ye tarried so long
from me ? Alas, this wound on
your head hath caught over
much cold. And so then they
rowed from the land ; and Sir
Bedivere beheld all those ladies
go from him. Then Sir Bedi-
vere cried, Ah, my lord Arthur,
what shall become of me now
ye go from me, and leave me
here alone among mine enemies.
Comfort thyself, said the king,
and do as well as thou mayest,
for in me is no trust for to trust
in. For I will into the vale of
Avilion, to heal me of my griev-
ous wound. And if thou hear
never more of me, pray for my
soul.

88 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

silly compromise of throwing the scabbard the second
time ; but still more the real things his fashion and
manner of style and treatment. These are weaker in
the verse than in the original of the Guinevere passage,
and he hardly takes anything literal in phrase, altering
importantly when he does take something, as in the feeble
expletive " deep." But he weaves the whole once more
into the most astonishing tissue of pure yet perfect prose
rhythm. That it takes but little, as Tennyson showed,
to make it once more into splendid verse of character as
different as possible from the bald shambling sing-song of
the early fifteenth-century man, is nothing against this.
That you can get some actual blank verse or fragments
of blank out of it is nothing again :

That hast been \un\io me so lief and dear . . .

And thou art named a noble knight ...

For thou wouldst for my rich sword see me dead . . .

For these (as such things in the right hands always do)
act as ingredients, not as separable parts. They colour
the rhythm, but they do not constitute it. They never
correspond with each other.

His devices. It is not, however, to the great show passages of " the
death and departing out of this world of them all," of the
Quest of the Graal, of the adventures of Lancelot and the
rest, that it is necessary to confine the search for proof of
Malory's mastery of style and rhythm. One general
symptom will strike any one who has read a fair amount
of the Morte from our point of view. There are plenty
of sentences in Malory beginning with " and " ; but it is
not the constant go-between and usher-of-all-work that it
is in Mandeville. The abundance of conversation gets
him out of this difficulty at once ; and he seems to have
an instinctive knowledge hardly shown before him, never
reached after him till the time of the great novelists of
j weaving conversation and narrative together. Bunyan,
and certainly most people before Bunyan's day, with
Defoe to some extent after him, seem to make distinct
gaps between the two, like that of the scenes of a play
to have now a piece of narrative, now one of definite

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 89

" Tig and Tiri " l drama. Malory does not. His narra-
tive order and his dialogue are so artistically adjusted that
they dovetail into one another. 2 Here is an instance, taken
entirely at hazard, not better than a hundred or a thou-
sand others, and perhaps not so good as some :

And with that came the damosel of the lake unto the king and
said, " Sir, I must speak with you in private." " Say on," said the
king, "what ye will." "Sir," said the lady, "put not on you this
mantle till ye have seen more, and in no wise let it come upon you
nor on no knight of yours till ye command the bringer thereof to put
it upon her." " Well," said King Arthur, " it shall be done as ye
counsel me." And then he said unto the damosel that came from his
sister, " Damosel, this mantle that ye have brought me I will see it
upon you." " Sir," said she, " it will not beseem me to wear a
knight's garment." "By my head," said King Arthur, "ye shall
wear it or it come on my back, on any man that here is ; " and so
the king made it to be put upon her ; and forthwith she fell down
dead, and nevermore spake word after, and was brent to coals.

Here, in a sample as little out of the common way as
possible, you may see the easy run of rhythm, the presence
of a certain not excessive balance, tempered by lengthen-
ing and shortening of clauses, the breaking and knitting
again of the cadence-thread ; and even (which is really
surprising in so early a writer) the selection, instinctive
no doubt, but not the less wonderful, of an emphatic
monosyllable to close the incident and paragraph. If a
more picked example be wanted, nothing better need
be sought than the often-quoted passage of the Chapel
Perilous. While one of the best of all, though perhaps
too long to quote, is that where Lancelot, after the great
battle with Turquine (the exact locality of which, by the
way, is given in the old histories of Manchester), comes to
the Giant's Castle of the Bridge, and slays the bridge-
ward, but riding into the castle yard, is greeted by " much
people in doors and windows that said, ' Fair Knight :
thou art unhappy,' " for a close to the chapter.

1 The fit reader will not have forgotten this vivid Johnsonism (which for
the moment puzzled two such not blunt wits as Hester Thrale's and Frances
Burney's), dismissing all that was dramatic of a dialogue printed as between
"/Cranes" and " TVrzbazus."

2 It has been urged that he owes this also to "the French book." Not
in this quarter will any one meet depreciation of the prose Arthurian romances.
But I think my often-repeated caution as to translation applies here.

90 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The dominant of Malory's rhythm, as might indeed
be expected in work so much based on French prose and
verse and English verse, is mainly iambic, though he does
not neglect the precious inheritance of the trochaic or
amphibrachic ending, nor the infusion of the trochaic run
elsewhere. His sentences, though sometimes of fair
length, are rarely periodic enough, or elaborately descrip-
tive enough, to need four-syllable and five-syllable feet :
and you may resolve sentence after sentence, as in the
last passage noted, into iambs pure, iambs extended by
a precedent short into anapaests and iambs, or curling
over with a short suffix into amphibrachs, and so getting
in the trochee.

And so | Sir Lanjcelot and | the damsel | departed. 1

Yet, in some mysterious way, he resists, as has been said,
the tendency to drop into poetry.

Now hast thou || thy payment i that thou hast so long deserved

is, as a matter of fact, an unexceptionable blank-verse
line, preceded by an unexceptionable fragment in a fashion
to be found all over Shakespeare, in Milton, and some-
times in all their better followers as well. Yet you would
never dream of reading it in prose with any blank-verse
rhythm, though the division at " payment " gives a fraction
of further blank verse, which Shakespeare in his latest days,
or Beaumont and Fletcher at any time, would have
unhesitatingly written.

I had thought of giving a few more rhythmical frag-
ments in the way of a bonne bouche. But on going
through the book (no unpleasant concession to duty) for
I suppose nearer the fiftieth than the twentieth time, I
found that, to do justice, mere fragments would hardly
suffice. Quintilian, I suppose, would hardly have appre-
ciated Malory's matter ; but he must have admitted that
the style was not of that " complexion sprinkled with

1 "And so | Sir Lan|celot and | the maid \ departed" would, of course,
be pure blank verse, and very difficult to smuggle off in prosed But the little

extra short of "dam|sel" saves the whole situation, and abolishes the blank -
verse tendency.

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 91

spots, bright, if you like, but too many and too different,"
which the sober Roman hated. Every now and then,
indeed, there comes a wonderful symphonic arrangement,
as in the close of the story of Balin : " Thus endeth the
tale of Balin and Balan, || two brothers born in North-
umberland, I good knights," where I have put the double
division to mark what we may almost call the prose-line,
making a prose-stanza with no trace of verse in it. More
complicated and more wonderful still is the rhythm of the
dialogue between the sorceress Hellawes, damsel of the
Chapel Perilous, and Sir Lancelot ; while the Graal part
is crowded with such things. But Malory never seems
to put himself out of the way for them ; they surge up
suddenly in the clear flood of his narrative, and add life
and flesh to it for a moment and the flood goes on.

It must, however, be observed that this prose of His excellence
Malory's, extraordinarily beautiful as it is, was a sort of
half -accidental result of the combination of hour and
man, and could never be repeated, save as the result of
deliberate literary craftsmanship of the imitative, though
of the best imitative, kind. As such it has been achieved
in our own days ; and in the proper place I may point
out that the denigration of Mr. Morris's prose as
" Wardour Street " and the like is short-sighted and un-
worthy. It is then a product of the man directly, but
not (or only in an indirect and sophisticated way) of the
hour. In Malory's days there was a great body of I
verse-romance in English, with a half-conventional phrase-
ology, which was not yet in any sense insincere or
artificial. This phraseology lent itself directly to the
treatment of Malory's subject ; while the forms in which
it was primarily arranged lent themselves in the same
way, though less obviously, and after a fashion requiring
more of the essence of the right man, to a simple but
extremely beautiful and by no means monotonous prose
rhythm, constantly introducing fragments of verse-
cadence, but never allowing them to arrange themselves
in anything like verse -sequence or metre. That the
great popularity of the book which is attested by

92 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

such outbursts against it as that of Ascham from the
mere prosaic-Protestant-Philistine point of view, almost
as well as by its eight black-letter editions between 1485
(Caxton's) and 1634 (Stansby's) was to any large, to
even any appreciable, extent due to conscious delight
in this beauty of prose, it would be idle to pretend.
Milton may have seen its beauty when those younger feet of
his were wandering in romance, and had not yet deserted
it for Philistia and Puritania ; when he forgathered with
Lancelot, and Pelleas, and Pellinore, instead of with the
constituents of " Smectymnuus," and the creatures of
Cromwell. Spenser can hardly have failed to do so
earlier, for though he has, with an almost whimsical
perversity of independence, refused to know anything of
Malory's Arthurian matter, the whole atmosphere and
ordonnance of the Faerie Queene are Malorian. But that
this popularity did influence Elizabethan prose few com-
petent students of English literature have ever failed to
recognise.

Bemers. . In passing from Malory to Berners (born just before
Sir Thomas finished his book, but probably some not
short time after he began it) and Bishop Fisher, who
was a decade older than Berners himself, there is a drop
even in the first case, and, as far as matter is concerned,
a long one in the second. But the places of both are
nearly as secure in our particular story. According to
one theory, Berners has the very great influential im-
portance of having brought " Euphuism " into England
by his version of Guevara's Horologe of Princes ; and his
other moral Englishings of this and that tongue must
have had weight. But for us he is the author, in
descending value, of the famous and, in its way, unsur-
passed Froissart, of Huon of Bordeaux, and of the rather
ill-selected, but still interesting, Arthur of Little Britain.
In these cases it is almost more probable, not to say
certain, that he had Malory before him, than that
Malory had Mandeville ; and he sometimes comes hardly
short of his " blessed original." But always more or les,s,
and in his more independent work, as in the Prefaces of

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 93

the Arthur and Froissart, very particularly, he betrays a
certain sophistication or " contamination." The presence
of the printed book, and of the influences, good and bad,
which accompany it, is with him.

Although the direct influence of Malory on the style of his
romance -translations is, as acknowledged above, hardly roma . nce ~

J translations.

to be doubted, it is true that much which may seem to
a casual reader directly derived from the elder is common
matter for both. But these communities of origin, let it be
said once more, are rather deceptive things ; and even the
certain study of a previous pattern leaves much to be
credited to the student. Berners did not exhibit his
worthiness to the best in his romance versions. In
Huon, indeed 1 though his original is almost a typical
example of the later overgrown Chanson de Geste, which
has sharked up, and but half digested, all sorts of
romantic oddments originally extraneous to it, he has a
canvas of the right stuff in the earlier part of the story,
and not a few windfalls in the accretions. Arthur of
Little Britain? on the other hand, is a late romance with
nothing early about it a specimen of the Amadis kind
regrafted on its French stock ; full of " conjuror's super-
natural," intricate adventures, typical (and palely typed)
characters, with many other of the faults that are some-
times justly, though more often unjustly, charged against
romance in general. 3 The real fault of both stories,
however, is that they are told long-windedly, and that
Berners has not cared, or dared, or been able, to imitate
Malory in correcting this defect. If any one likes to
turn to Huon's adjuration of the Emperor, whereby Raoul
of Vienna meets his death, or to that remarkable series
of scenes in which Arthur successively polishes off a lion,
a giantess, her giant, a griffin, a few dozen knights, and

1 Edited for the E.E.T.S. by Sir Sidney Lee.

2 Ed. Utterson (London, 1814), a stately quarto, with very delectable
illustrations from MS.

3 One cannot quarrel with Southey when he asked what on earth made
Berners choose it when Giron le Courtois and Perceforest were [as they are
still] untranslated. The inaccessibility of Perceforest, even in any modern
French edition, has been a life-long grief to me ; for blackletter non legitur
with my eyes.

94 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

a spinning " mahomet," he will find the difference pretty
soon.

In considering his shortcomings there would be a
lack of fairness, and even perhaps of aptitude in fact
and phrase, if we accused poor Berners of being " un-
grammatical." There was, thank Heaven ! no English
Grammar then ; though, before long, people were to
begin that series of " ill-mumbled masses " of the profane
kind which have since endeavoured, in the first place, to
make a ritual for English on the infinitely different basis of
Latin, and, in the second, to draw up rules and conven-
tions for a language which is almost wholly exception
and idiom. It was not because Berners was ungrammati-
cal, but because he was unrhetorical, that his sentences
straddle and straggle in the way they go * because he
had not, like Malory, a genius of ordonnance for himself,
or, like Fisher, a certain inherited custom of it from
others.

And contrast But, on the other hand (in this case again differing
Prefaces ^ rom Malory, but coinciding with Fisher), he has no small
desire to be rhetorical ; and the two Prefaces (rather well
known among the few students of this subject) to the
Arthur and the Froissart betray the fact in the most
unmistakable, though perhaps not in the happiest manner.
In both of these it is evident that the Baron, exactly
like the Bishop, is sedulously aping the order (v. in/,} of
the " secular orators," although he knew himself to be
" insufficient in the facondious art of rhetoric." But he
has a few tricks of the said rhetoric already, especially
the doublet " chivalrous feats and martial prowesses,"
" uncunning and dark ignorance," etc.

These expressions, as well as a regret at his not having

1 E.g. to take an example, previously used by Professor Macaulay as an
example of "ungrammaticalness," "And when these knights and other men
of arms knew the will and answer of King Dampeter [Don Pedro the Cruel],
whereby they reputed him right orgulous and presumptuous, and made all the
haste they could to advance, to do him all the hurt they could." This is
really a kind of " Thucydidean " syntax, to use the comparison as to which we
differed with Mr. Earle in the case of "The Slaying of Cynewulf." It is
"schemed to meaning," and the meaning is quite clear to any intelligent
person.

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 95

command of " fresh ornate polished English," are from
Arthur of Little Britain, In the Froissart Preface he tries
a higher flight, having imped his wings with more and
gayer plumes of the same general feather. " Graces and
thanks " is rather more than sufficiently pleonastic ; but
" shew, open, manifest, and declare " exaggerates before-
hand (and not very improbably suggested) the ponderous
triads which Scott puts into the mouth of Sir Robert
Hazlewood of Hazlewood. " Inquire, desire, and follow,"
" eschew, avoid, and utterly fly," succeed, not without
unintended application to the special subject. " Acts,
gests, and deeds," " labours, dangers, and perils," flock and
throng and press behind. Nor are the principal words of
these groups content to march alone " sage counsels,
great reasons, and high wisdoms " sees each noun provided
with his harbingering adjective " in the best and most
orgilous manner."

Now we may be tempted by our corrupt natures to
laugh at this, and be inclined to have none of it, and
greatly to prefer the rough, unpolished eloquence which
has given us a very different style the story of Orthon
and the death of the Bruce, the siege of Aiguillon and
the battle of Navarete, the revenging of Sir John Chandos,
and that wonderful " blind man's buff" when Scots and
English chased each other, without being able to find, in
the wilds of Weardale and Tynedale round " the little
Abbey, all brent, which was called in King Arthur's days
La Blaunche Launde." * And as far as mere delectation
goes, this preference is beyond all doubt well founded.
But it is not so from the historic point of view. Even
these inspiriting pages of Berners have something of the
falsetto in them : what was quite natural in Malory has
become half- artificial here. But the awkward and
exaggerated rhetoricism of the Prefaces, though it look
far more artificial still, is really the novice's practice in a

1 Nobody can ever hope to understand, and indeed I should have thought
that nobody could enjoy, mediaeval literature who is amused, or shocked, or
even surprised by this unhesitating unification, as historically known and
geographically associable facts, of the history of King Arthur and that of
King Edward.

96 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

real art. Already, especially in the less ambitious and
less bedizened Arthur piece, there is balance, rhythm,
accompaniment of sound to sense. We may illustrate
him with a passage from the Froissart Preface and the
death of Robert Bruce.

What condign graces and thanks men ought to give to the writers
of histories, who, with their great labours, have done so much
profit to the human life ; they shew, open, manifest, and declare
to the reader, by example of old antiquity, what we should inquire,
desire, and follow ; and also, what we should eschew, avoid, and
utterly fly : for when we (being unexpert of chances) see, behold,
and read the ancient acts, gests, and deeds, how and with what
labours, dangers, and perils they were gested and done, they right
greatly admonish, ensigne, and teach us how we may lead forth
our lives : and farther, he that hath the perfect knowledge of
others' joy, wealth, and high prosperity, and also trouble, sorrow,
and great adversity, hath the expert doctrine of all perils.

. . . . . . 4

Then he called to him the gentle knight, Sir James Douglas,
and said before all the lords, Sir James, my dear friend, ye
know well that I have had much ado in my days, to uphold and
sustain the right of this realm, and when I had most ado, I
made a solemn vow, the which as yet I have not accomplished,
whereof I am right sorry ; the which was, if I might achieve and
make an end of all my wars, so that I might once have brought
this realm in rest and peace, then I promised in my mind to have
gone and warred on Christ's enemies, adversaries to our holy
Christian faith. To this purpose mine heart hath ever intended,
but our Lord would not consent thereto ; for I have had so much
ado in my days, and now in my last enterprise, I have taken such
a malady, that I can not escape. And sith it is so that my body
can not go, nor achieve that my heart desireth, I will send the
heart in stead of the body, to accomplish mine avow. And because
I know not in all my realm, no knight more valiant than ye be,
nor of body so well furnished to accomplish mine avow in stead
of myself, therefore I require you, mine own dear especial friend,
that ye will take on you this voyage, for the love of me, and to
acquit my soul against my Lord God ; for I trust so much in
your nobleness and truth, that an ye will take on you, I doubt
not, but that ye shall achieve it, and then shall I die in more ease
and quiet, so that it be done in such manner as I shall declare
unto you. I will, that as soon as I am trespassed out of this
world, that ye take my heart out of my body, and embalm it, and
take of my treasure, as ye shall think sufficient for that enterprise,
both for yourself, and such company as ye will take with you,
and present my heart to the holy sepulchre, where as our Lord
lay, seeing my body can not come there ; and take with you such

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 97

company and purveyance as shall be appertaining to your estate.
And wheresoever ye come, let it be known, how ye carry with you
the heart of King Robert of Scotland, at his instance and desire to
be presented to the holy sepulchre.

As for Fisher, it may be at once admitted that the Fisher.
interest of his prose is almost exclusively technical. Not
that it is contemptible in itself. A sentence, for instance,
like this : l

is not an extraordinary one ; but there is something in
it which displays more of the period than we have usually
seen before something which reminds us, with not too
much incongruity, that there were probably not two full
decades between the death of its author and the birth of
Richard Hooker. Already there is in it as the above
division and quantification may help to bring out that
peculiar wave-like motion insurging, and recoiling, and
advancing again ; with individual movement not mechanic-
ally or mathematically correspondent, but rhythmically
associable and complementary which is essential to har-
monious prose ; and already this fluctuance demands and
receives the more elaborate accompaniment in expression
of paeons and dochmiacs.

There is still more ambition of perhaps less strictly

1 Fisher's English Works, i. in (E.E.T.S. London, 1876). It may be
a question whether the larger rhythms or foot-groups should not be indicated,
by the double || or otherwise. I have actually done this in some cases ; but
in most it seemed to me that the punctuation should serve. And I think that,
for the public taste, symbols, like other things, non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitate.

98 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

technical accomplishment in the passage 1 which Professor
Mayor specified, assigning it, correctly, to Oriental origin,
and paralleling it from Riickert, but not seeming to know
or remember that it is one of the most favourite
apologues of the Gesta Romanorum and similar collections.

That man were put in great peril and jeopardy that should hang
over a very deep pit holden up by a weak and slender cord or line,
in whose bottom should be most woode and cruel beasts of every
kind, abiding with great desire his falling down, for that intent when
he shall fall down anon to devour him, which line or cord that he
hangeth by should be holden up and stayed only by the hands of that
man, to whom by his manifold un gentleness he hath ordered and
made himself as a very enemy. Likewise, dear friends, consider in
yourself. If now under me were such a very deep pit, wherein
might be lions, tigers, and bears gaping with open mouth to destroy
and devour me at my falling down, and that there be nothing
whereby I might be holden up and succoured, but a broken bucket
or pail which should hang by a small cord, stayed and holdert up
only by the hands of him to whom I have behaved myself as an
enemy and adversary by great and grievous injuries and wrongs done
unto him.

Here is another :

In which four, the noble woman Martha (as say the doctors
entreating this gospel, and her life) was singularly to be commended
and praised, wherefore let us consider likewise, whether in this noble
countess may any thing like be found. First, the blessed Martha
was a woman of noble blood, to whom by inheritance belonged the
castle of Bethany, and this nobleness of blood they have which
descend of noble lineage. Beside this there is a nobleness of
manners, without which the nobleness of blood is much defaced, for
as Boetius saith : If ought be good in the nobleness of blood it is for
that thereby the noble men and women should be ashamed to go out
of kind from the virtuous manners of their ancestry before. Yet also
there is another nobleness, which ariseth in every person by the
goodness of nature, whereby full often such as come of right poor
and unnoble father and mother, have great abilities of nature,
to noble deeds. Above all these same there is a fourth manner
of nobleness, which may be called an increased nobleness, as by
marriage and affinity of more noble persons such as were of less
condition may increase in higher degree of nobleness. In every of
these, I suppose, this countess was noble. First, she came of noble
blood lineally descending of King Edward III. within the fourth
degree of the same. Her father was John, Duke of Somerset, her
mother was called Margaret, right noble as well in manners as in

1 Fisher's English Works, i. 90, 91 (E.E.T.S. London, 1876).

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 99

blood. To whom she was a very daughter in all noble manners, for
she was bounteous and liberal to every person of her knowledge or
acquaintance. Avarice and covetise she most hated, and sorrowed it
full much in all persons, but specially in any that belonged unto her.
She was also of singular easiness to be spoken unto, and full
courteous answer she would make to all that came unto her. Of
marvellous gentleness she was unto all folks, but specially unto her
own, whom she trusted and loved right tenderly. Unkind she
would not be unto no creature, nor forgetful of any kindness or
service done to her before, which is no little part of very nobleness.
She was not vengeable, nor cruel, but ready anon to forget and to
forgive injuries done unto her at the least desire or motion made
unto her for the same. Merciful also and piteous she was unto such
as was grieved and wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in
poverty or sickness or any other misery. To God and to the church
full obedient and tractable, searching His honour and pleasure full
busily. A wariness of herself she had alway to eschew every thing
that might dishonest any noble woman, or distain her honour in any
condition. Trifelous things that were little to be regarded she would
let pass by, but the other that were of weight and substance wherein
she might profit she would not let for any pain or labour to take
upon hand. These and many other such noble conditions left unto
her by her ancestors she kept, and increased them with a great
diligence.

These are both taken from the long sermon -com-
mentary on the Seven Penitential Psalms, which is
Fisher's chief English work. But I do not know that
the two elaborate funeral discourses on Henry VII. and
his mother, Lady Margaret, are not the most important
places for us, because of the definite rhetorical striving
which they show us in their author, and of the sometimes
quite distinct means and instruments which we see him
applying. He has given us, in the discourse on the
King, perfectly frank acknowledgment that (as any one
acquainted with the matter must see at once without the
confession) he is " using the same order which the secular
orators have in their funeral orations most diligently
observed." But his rhetorical exercitations are by no
means confined to the mere " order " of Commendation,
Exhortation to pity, and Comfort. The divisions are
compounded of clauses studiously, and with no little art,
now paralleled, now built on each other. And we
observe throughout, both in this and in the " Lady

ioo A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Margaret " pieces, an abundant and even superabundant
use of those groups of synonyms, or all but synonyms,
which we noted in Berners. " Wisdom, learning, and
virtue " is not quite an example of this as far as the
meanings go, though it has the group -effect in sound.
" Dangers and jeopardies," near to it, are more exactly
the thing. But the " Morning remembrance at the
month's mind of Margaret " an alliteration which was
only in one way going out of verse, and was coming again
into prose ten thousand strong is notable both for these
groupings and for other things. " Bounteous and liberal,"
" knowledge and acquaintance," " avarice and covetise "
these three pairs come in fourteen consecutive words.
Very remarkable too, in this passage, is the abundance
of rhetorical inversion, contrasted with the natural order
sufficiently not to be irksome or a mere clumsy trick, but
prevailing to an extent which evidently betokens a
deliberate attempt to fix attention by a " strange device."

And these things, though not yet achieved in the best
manner, are not merely achieved to some extent, but are
achieved by means which are capable, in the right hands,
of infinite multiplication and development. The doublets,
triplets, and " foursomes " are often superfluous and some-
times absurd as they occur. But they present, in them-
selves, an infinite possibility of rhythmical adjustment and
ornament, not least because of the tendency to group
Romance with Teutonic equivalents, and so to get the
advantage of the different rhythmical values and colours.

And this we shall, I think, find to be the real import-
ance of fifteenth-century prose rather than its production
of a kind of miracle in Malory. If he had not been
vouchsafed to us the loss would be immense in delight to
a dozen generations (save some three or four who would
not attend) of eager readers, and not a few writers would
have lost a valuable pattern. But his less inspired
immediate predecessors, contemporaries, and followers
would have done the necessary pioneer -work for the
Elizabethans, and handed on the necessary torch to them
all the same. Without these elders, contemporaries, and

iv FROM CHAUCER TO MALORY 101

followers, Malory himself would have been powerless to
provide the range of subject -treatment, the body of
vocabulary and prose-stuff, or to make out the " plant " of
a constantly growing language for the use of a constantly
growing literature. Now this was necessary before great
original kinds of various work could be done, and before
a perfect command of mere expression and correct com-
position could superadd to itself the rhythmical grace of
Hooker, much more the mighty fugues and fantasies of
the great word-virtuosos from Raleigh and Greville and
Donne to Milton and Taylor and Browne.

INTERCHAPTER I

THE short summaries and few general remarks which
have been set at the close of the three preceding chapters
will hardly have dispensed us from a further survey back-
wards of the Interchapter kind. I believe these inter-
mediate summings-up to be of the greatest possible value
in all enquiries of a literary-historical nature ; and they
can nowhere be of more importance than in a history *of
this sort, which is almost entirely of the exploring and
pioneer variety. I have, I believe, already said in the
Preface, and shall take the liberty to repeat here (and
elsewhere it may be), that the object of the book is less
to arrive at definite conclusions still less to lay down a
cut-and-dried system than to give a rationalised survey
of the facts. In such a survey nothing can be of more
importance than to halt from time to time, and see what
the results, up to the point, have actually been.

Almost the whole of the country through which we
have passed is, relatively and analogically at least, " the
forest primaeval." Absolutely it is of course not so ; be-
cause composition in writing, and especially composition
in prose, is almost necessarily artificial, that is to say
imitative. In the case of a man like ^Elfric, or even like
the author of the Blickling Homilies, this artificial and
indeed artistic imitation is very prominent ; you can see
it again in the Ancren Riwle and other Middle English
examples. But except (and I suspect even in the case
of) JElirlc himself, though men may have written with
rhetorical treatises (in Latin, of course) before them, and
may have studied to reproduce their Latin original as
closely as possible, a deliberate conscious intention to get

INTERCHAPTER I 103

prose effects out of English is almost impossible. It
would require an evolution and stimulation of the critical
sense which is antecedently improbable in the highest
degree, and of which we find no trace actually before the
time of Caxton for Chaucer, though he had it as to
verse, is not likely to have felt it as to prose. In refer-
ence, therefore, to the men of these seven or eight
centuries before, say, 1450, the subject of enquiry, with
perhaps one single exception, is not what they intended
to do, but merely what they did. And, as has been
already hinted, that single exception ^Elfric is possibly
no exception at all.

It is scarcely rash to say that no poetry has ever been
more essentially rhythmical than Anglo-Saxon. An
average page of it looks by no means much unlike an
average page of Greek choric verse. 1 But suppose a
person taught (as Milton inhumanly taught his daughters)
to read the two languages without himself understanding
them, and further, in copies without line- division and
with no knowledge of their prosody. I entertain no
sort of doubt that, even with a good ear, he would be
some time in finding out the rhythm of the Greek, whereas
that of the Old English would strike him at once. It
would be, in fact, only in certain cases that the Greek
rhythm, beautiful as it always is, would strike him at all,
till he had discovered the metre. In the English there is
practically no metre to find out : rhythm must strike at
once, and by itself, if it is ever to strike and it does.

Further, this rhythm, whatever refinements it may be
possible to analyse out of or into it, is generally of the
simplest possible character a continuous trochaic roll
which at the end of lines is practically omnipresent, either
in its full constituted self, or in a long syllable which, with
the natural pause, constitutes it. 2 Of these and much

1 Of course I am not referring to the blocks of anapaestic dimeter, or other
things of the kind, but to the chorus proper, where only the strophic and
antistrophic correspondence supplies the key.

2 This sort of "prose catalexis," as it may be called, continues through-
out our history, and the management of it, consciously or unconsciously, is
one of the chief word-instruments of the prose artist.

104 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM .

more rarely of the dactylic ending, a piecing which has
always continued to be the regular substitute for the
trochee in English the whole edge of the print, as you
run your eye down page after page of Anglo-Saxon
poetry, will be found to be composed, while the begin-
ning and middle of the short lines is, if not exclusively
composed of it, almost equally dominated by the same
cadence.

It was of course impossible that this domination should
be equally pervading in prose ; or there would practically
have been no Anglo-Saxon prose at all. In the remark-
able verse-prose of JElfric it does appear to a very great
extent, as we should expect. In writers who have no
special thought of ornament, the closes are less invariably,
but still generally, trochaic or trochaoid, and the necessarily
much longer groups of words may seem to possess greater
liberty. Yet even here, in the Chronicle, in Alfred's trans-
lations, in the Apollonius, where not, you will find but a
small proportion of distinct iambic endings in sentences
and sentence-members, though they do exist.

This peculiarity necessarily conditions, to a large
extent, the whole rhythmical character of Anglo-Saxon
prose composition. The trochee is a very peculiar foot.
It may not have that all-pervading and all-conquering
character of the iamb which Quintilian intimates in a
famous phrase, but this is precisely because it has so
strong a -character of its own, and is practically incapable
of disguising itself or of combining in inseparable fashions.
This means, as a consequence, that compositions in which
it is dominant, or largely prevalent, have a necessary lack
of variety. Now variety, as may be unhesitatingly laid
down after the same wise critic, is the great essential of
prose rhythm. 1

Not that the writer of Old English was absolutely
ascriptus glebae trochaicae. From very early times, as we

1 The levity and gesticulatory character which Aristotle (v. sup. p. 7 note)
objected to in the foot do not appear in Old English, because of the singular
gravity of the language. "Their heavy rider keeps them down." And it is
not till the Middle English period that the invading iamb persuades the
trochee to join it freely in producing combinations of larger feet.

INTERCHAPTER I 105

have seen in the Cyneheard and Cynewulf story and the
deed of gift to Worcester, he could manage a straight-
forward style with a certain amount of iambic or even
paeonic rhythm in it, which was very far from ineffective.
But when he took to " flights " the trochee recovered its
ascendency, with the consequences thereof. It has also
been pointed out that this trochaic underhum was to a
great extent a result of the character of the language
itself. A language which is largely monosyllabic, and at
the same time inflected, necessarily begets trochees ready-
made in still larger quantities.

Until, therefore, a much greater infusion of Latin and
Romance words, with the ultimate accentuation of the
latter, had been admitted, and until inflexion began to
drop off, a thoroughly flexible and variable prose word-
book and phrase-book could hardly be achieved : and it
was not. Moreover, as has also been duly pointed out,
the syntactical peculiarities of the language led to a
certain monotony of sentence-arrangement and cadencing.
The translations as close as possible to the original in
every one of these respects from vocabulary to word-
order which have been given above, will explain what
has been here said better than much expatiation of
comment ; and will show how it is that Anglo-Saxon by
no means " poor " in any fair sense of the word, and not
even justly to be called illiterate scarcely admitted of the
greater forms of prose. It had already mastered that
simple, straightforward faculty of narration and exposition
even, to a certain extent, of argument which in later
centuries, when the word-stuff had been reinforced and
polished, Latimer and Bunyan and Defoe and Cobbett
were to employ so admirably. But when it was simple
it was apt to be rather too simple ; and when it aspired
to greatness it was almost certain to slip into a sort of
prose-poetry which approached too near in form to poetry
itself, and to poetry of a somewhat rudimentary and
monotonous kind.

If, however, by some impossibility, JElfrlc had been
able to attain ornate rhythm like Sir Thomas Browne's,

106 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

and the Chronicle men, or the author of Apollonius, a
pedestrian harmony like Southey's, the upper structure of
the work of both must have been all to do again when
the change from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English took place.
I say the upper structure, because the architects of the
oldest English undoubtedly provided a foundation, and
something more than a foundation, which has not been
much, if at all, disturbed or added to. But the twin
influences of the revolution the infusion of Latin or
Romance words with their different terminations and
balances, and the gradual disuse of inflexion could not
but alter the main, if not the whole, conditions of prose
building, and especially of prose rhythmical arrangement.
It is no wonder if for some three centuries we find the
bricks half-moulded and half-baked ; the mortar daubed
without the slightest attention to temper in its makicig
or to artistic effect in its application ; the courses out of
level, and the bonds irregular. Besides, there is the
special effect of translation. A very large proportion of
Anglo-Saxon had, no doubt, been translated likewise ;
but the translators had been good or fair masters of their
own tongue as far as it went, and had taken not a few
liberties in adding and altering. In all probability the
whole of the earlier Middle English prose is translation
pure and simple, executed by men who are, for the most
part, making their very imperfect dialect as they go
along, who do not seem to possess much original talent,
and who have a hampering and deadening uniformity of
subject to deal with. The famous passage describing
the cruelties of the reign of Stephen shows what Old
English could do almost at its last gasp ; the Ancren
Riwle, probably not fifty years younger, and a distinctly
favourable specimen of the newer form, shows what that
form had to content itself with.

We have been able to take some interesting examples
from it, but they all betray, and necessarily so, a hap-
hazard character now French, now Latin, now Biblical.
And it cannot be too often repeated that, until Middle
English was far on its way, French, so powerful and so

INTERCHAPTER I 107

liberal in verse-patterns, had little or nothing to give us
as guiding stuff in prose ; while, when things improved,
the admirable prose of Villehardouin and Joinville un-
luckily coincided with a long interval during which
English history, and nearly all English prose not sacred,
was written in Latin. If only Walter Mapes or William
of Malmesbury had used English as a vehicle ! But the
thing was probably impossible.

It is equally impossible to say how long this state of
things might have gone on, if it had not been for the
great change in conversation and education indicated in
the famous passage of Trevisa. 1 As long as people learnt
Latin through French, and made no use of English in
school at all, they could not think of writing their
native language in a scholarly fashion. As soon as they
exchanged the foreign language for the native as a
vehicle and instrument of construing, etc., a definite
attempt to transfer something of the literary quality of
French or Latin into English rapidly became, in successive
stages, possible, probable, and certain. The almost indis-
pensable feeling of definite emulation does not seem to
have arisen till Caxton ; and, as has been said above,
we must not allow too much even for mere unconscious
copying in the first tolerably accomplished school of
prose that which shows itself towards the close of the
fourteenth century. But some influence of the kind must
have been exerted, in whatever degree and measure, upon
Wyclif and Trevisa, upon Chaucer and Mandeville.

The illustrations of rhythmical progress which the
work of these four gives are differentiated somewhat
remarkably. Trevisa supplies least, as falling most into
line with his predecessors, and rendering Higden " some-
how nohow," as the old popular phrase goes, yet with a
certain modernity as compared with earlier work. For us
his matter alone is eloquent. With Wyclif, and the tracts
influenced by him, and the versions of the Bible issued
by him and by his followers, things become decidedly
different. An influence which has been sporadically
1 V. sup. p. 57.

io8 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

manifest for centuries, that of the Vulgate, now con-
centrates itself and becomes constant. Something of the
all-powerful Hebrew parallelism, which of itself creates
rhythmical quality, establishes itself in English. In the
tracts and sermons there is another cause at work less
beautiful in its results perhaps, but hardly less powerful.
Wyclif himself is a scholastic of almost the first rank,
and most of his grex are at least technically masters of
the same craft. Now, logical arrangement of thought,
though it has sometimes failed to be rhythmical, lends
itself with remarkable ease to rhythmical arrangement.
The barest syllogism has a certain rhythm ; and when
that syllogism is clothed and extended rhetorically, it is
the fault of the writer if he does not develop the rhythm
likewise. Wyclif and those about him are not very
highly developed in this respect ; but they are seldom
merely amorphous.

The infinitely greater literary ethos of Chaucer necessi-
tated a stronger and more various display of prose
manner in him. We have duly noticed those singular
out-croppings of blank verse in the Tale of Melibee, which
are not quite like anything else in literature. They show,
on the one hand, how, though blank decasyllabics did not
yet, or for long afterwards, exist in English verse, the
practice of decasyllabic in rhymed couplet or stanza-form
had subdued the poet to itself ; how, on the other, he was
evidently trying to impress some comeliness of form on
prose, and how, on the third (for three hands are as useful
in argument as they would be physically), English was
gravitating towards a strongly iambic mould. To me at
any rate, if not to others, the elegiac couplet at the
opening of the Boethius tells the same story, though I do
not believe that Chaucer intended to write it. In the
versions of the metra he came, as it seems to me again,
to the highest level of English prose yet attained, and
one not so very far below anything reached since, except
a few topless flights of the greatest seventeenth and
nineteenth century masters. And it is very noticeable
that here he is not betrayed into any improper echoing

INTERCHAPTER I 109

of the originals. In the greater part of Melibee and
almost the whole of the Parson's Tale, except the remark-
able W/-palinode, he is more like his predecessors, and
therefore more formless. But the " blank " tendency re-
appears, with not a little less questionable rhythmification,
in this coda. And the treatise on the Astrolabe, debarred
by its subject from any flights, is a very remarkable
testimony to the progress which English was making, so
as to gain or regain a style-rhythm of all work, clear, not
inharmonious, but not in the least ambitious or intricate.

I do not know whether anybody, in discussing the
vexed question of the original language of Mandeville, has
attempted tests of cadence ; but I doubt whether much
benefit could be derived from them. As any one who
has ever tried translation, on more than the smallest scale,
and in more than the most schoolboy fashion, must know
for himself in his own case as the painful reviewer of
the baser sort of translators knows in the case of others,
it is possible only by an enormous tour de force, and then
only now and then for a short time, to keep the order
even, let alone the rhythm, of French in English with
any good effect ; while the badness of the effect in cases
of mere inadequacy is quite too shocking. To make
good English out of good French you have not only to
paraphrase rather than to construe, but you have to break
up and remake the sentences, alter the balance of the
clauses " transpose," in short, in almost every possible
way. The chief resemblance to early French prose, as,
for instance, in Villehardouin, and still more in his
continuator Henri de Valenciennes, is the already-
mentioned evidence of short sentences beginning with
"And " "El" a habit most undoubtedly derived from the
similar one in the laisses or tirades of the chansons de
geste. On the other hand, it is interesting to com-
pare the Voyage and Travel with its four-hundred-year
elder Apollonius of Tyre. Between them we shall find
hardly any third example of clear straightforward nar-
rative comparable to these two ; and between the two
themselves there is no want of resemblance, and no want

i io A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

of effectiveness either. But it is the effectiveness, carried
a little farther, of a story told by a child (I do not say to
a child), and is almost entirely devoid of artifice, though
the wonderful beauty of some of the legends themselves
requires none, and gives the impression of a great deal.

In the fifteenth century with its nibble at the six-
teenth as defined above the interest for us concentrates
itself upon Malory in the first place, and upon Berners
and Fisher in the second, though the curious attempts of
Pecock supply us with something, and though an excursus
of interest in the contributory way may, and presently
shall, be got out of the earlier " aureators," or employers
of pedantic and high-flown language, none of whom can
be said to have much, if any, command of co-ordinated
rhythm, but who hit all unknowing upon a mighty
instrument thereof which was to be worked long after-
wards to perfection by Sir Thomas Browne. Nor should
we fail to repeat that in the widening of subject which men
like Capgrave and Fortescue provide, and in the insistent
practice of translation, not only matter but also method was
unconsciously accumulating. Still, the three are the three.

It has been already suggested that Malory, the most
interesting by far as literature, is not, historically, in the
most direct line of rhythmical development. He was
undoubtedly much read ; Ascham would hardly have
taken the trouble to write himself down an honest ass in
respect of the book, if he had not been so ; and the
greater Elizabethan literature is full of traces of his
influence in spirit. But of that influence in form we shall
not, I think, discover very much if we go seriously to work.
In the first place, his is an outbreak of genius more than a
development of study ; and, in the second, it is very much
more a summing-up of what was possible, with the means
already known and used, than a construction and applica-
tion of freshly invented plant to newly gathered material.

Berners, with far less genius, has something of the
same kind ; but he adds to it something else which, in its
turn, with less genius still but in greater concentration
and in higher development, constitutes the whole attraction

INTERCHAPTER I in

and qualification, for us, of Fisher. These men have felt
like Malory's publisher, what it was perhaps impossible
for Malory to feel, what he most certainly and fortunately
did not feel as a fact dissatisfaction with their medium of
expression, admiration of others, determination if possible
to make English those others' equal. There may have
been, as some think, actual revived and increased teaching
of Rhetoric in the ordinary scholastic course ; there may
have been, in Fisher's case especially, a beginning of
resort to its classical exponents ; there was certainly
practice of version from French and Latin, and latterly
from Spanish and Greek and even Hebrew. And these
things supply the devices noted above, and result in the
practice exemplified in our specimens. It is often
awkward and " scholastic " in the unfavourable sense ;
sometimes almost puerile, with its confidence in repetition,
inversion, and the like. But it prepares the way, as the
far more beautiful and intrinsically precious style of
Malory never could do, for the developments and achieve-
ments of the future in rhythm as in other points.

This Interchapter would, however, as has been hinted,
be incomplete without a few more words on a subject
already touched in it, but not much exemplified in the
specimens ' previously given the great development of
vocabulary in the course of the fifteenth century, and in
particular the growth of " aureation," or the use of
splendid (as it were gilded} words for those words' sake.

The actual enlargement of the dictionary was, of
course, a consequence, partly of advancing civilisation as
it is called, partly of the much wider range of literature,
even translated literature, in respect of themes and
subjects. The first important English dictionaries, the
Promptorium Parvulorum * ( 1 440) and the Catholicon
Anglicum 2 (forty years later), date from this century, and
already have very respectable word -lists, not poor in
terms of Romance and Latin origin. But about the date

1 Ed. Way, Camden Society, 3 vols. (1843-65); vol. iii. very difficult to
get. Ed. Mayhew, E.E.T.S. (1908).

2 Ed. Heritage and Wheatley, E.E.T.S. (1881). Both this and the
Promptoriiim are of course English-Za/m.

ii2 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

of the latter book a process, which was going on in all
countries more or less, 1 brought on uncritically and ex-
cessively perhaps, but with valuable results for all that a
great accession of elaborate terms of Latin origin. In
order not to burden the book and the reader with un-
necessary displays of learning, I may refer to one volume
only a specially suitable one for the purpose Dr.
Ingram's collection 2 of early translations of the Imitatio
Christi. The work of A Kempis, from its own remark-
able rhythmical character, could hardly fail to influence
its translators. But it is the language of the translations
to which I wish to draw attention.

The first or " Old " version which Dr. Ingram printed
may date from the middle of the century. 3 Two others,
printed in 1504 and perhaps written a good deal earlier,
are by " Lady Margaret's " chaplain, Atkinson, and L^dy
Margaret herself. Now in all these versions there appear
examples of the heavily and directly Latinised vocab-
ulary, which contrasts in Pecock with his curious " Saxon-
isings," and which in other fifteenth -century writers
appears without them. Dr. Ingram protested against
these as " unlike to genuine English." But let us see.
The list contains words like " claustral," " confabulation,"
" fecundity," " intellection," " longanimity," " taciturnity,"
" vilipend," every one of which is genuine English to-day.
It contains others, like the verb " abject " (why not, if
"/n?ject " and " interject " ?), " circumfound " (why not, if
" confound " ?), and many more, which have failed to survive
by mere accident, and some of which any writer would
be not ill-advised to revive.

But, dropping these daggers, let us observe the surely
unquestionable advantage, for rhythmical purposes, of these
words as synonyms, and as fresh-comers altogether. How

1 It is noticeable in English and still more in Scottish poetry, and most
noticeable of all in the poetry and prose of the French grands rhttoriqueurs,
as they were called by their countryman and contemporary, Coquillart. The
lingua pedantesca of Italian is half an exaggeration, half a burlesque, of the
same tendency.

2 E.E.T.S. (1893).

3 An attribution of the Cambridge University Library Catalogue "about
1400" must be wrong, for all manner of reasons.

INTERCHAPTER I 113

any one can be otherwise than glad at the introduction
of so fine a word as " claustral," or so useful an appella-
tion for a too rare thing as " taciturnity," I cannot under-
stand. Also, whether the fifteenth - century " aureators "
and Browne and Johnson and others were all wrong, and
the stock condemnation of their practice (which Dr.
Ingram took from the poet Campbell directly, but which
is a commonplace) is all right, or vice versa, one thing
must be clear. For good or for evil, and for a good or
an evil which must depend very mainly, if not wholly, on
the skill of the artist, the introduction of such words
must alter the character, and increase the possibilities,
of prose rhythm to an immense extent. Here as far
as the mere individual word-values are concerned are
reinforcements of anapaest, amphibrach, paeon, and even
dochmiac added to the simple monosyllables, iambs,
trochees, and dactyls of earlier English ; here, much more
also, are materials for the construction, out of more words
than one, of endless combinations of feet. That some of
them will be rejected or disused does not in the least
matter, for, as has been shown, others of exactly the
same rhythmical character and value will remain, and
will for ever serve as examples for fresh coinage.

With this and the other new contingents to the
language, and with the commencement of definite
rhetorical study and practice, little but the application
of individual genius to the work was now needed. One
particular influence of pattern, that of the new versions
of the Bible, which in importance had never been
approached before, and has never been equalled since,
was to be added immediately ; was indeed in actual
operation before the death of Fisher. But this we shall
barely touch in the next chapter for reasons. In the
present critical summary, however, and in the three
chapters of positive analysis on which it is based, we
have given what seemed necessary as to the history of
our subject before the " Elizabethan " period, in that
larger extension of the term which includes the newer-
fangled writers of the later years of Elizabeth's father.

CHAPTER V

THE FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER

Shorter retrospect Continuance of rhetorical influence : the Cam-
bridge School Cheke : his "bankruptcy" theory Its fallacy
Wilson and " ink-horn terms " The excuses Ascham Tyn-
dale The Prayer-Book (Cranmer ?) Latimer Profane trans-
lations Lyly and Euphuism : its failure in rhythm Hdoker :
his achievement Rhythm-sweep And fingering of particular
words Sidney.

Shorter IN the preceding chapters and Interchapter we have
' seen how prose style generally, and prose rhythm in
particular, slowly and gradually arrived at the possession
of its means and the comprehension of its objects, through
the stages of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. In the
older language we saw that it did what it could, and that
it could even do not a little, but was hampered by many
things by the somewhat amorphous character of Anglo-
Saxon verse, into which prose slipped too easily ; by
certain peculiarities and limitations of vocabulary ; by
the too-pervadingly trochaic rhythm of the language,
which prevented it from availing itself of the statelier and
more varied combinations the four-syllabled and five-
syllabled feet of perfect prose ; and, lastly, by the com-
paratively small range of subject, which hardly invited
great variation of tone. And we saw, further, how in
the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries Middle
English forming itself by the, at first, slow but ever-
increasing reinforcement and incorporation of Romance
words into the destined blend gradually freed itself

114

CHAP, v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 115

from all its limitations, gained multiplicity and variety
of expression, gained also multiplicity and variety of
vocabulary, possessed itself of the materials of paeonic
and dochmiac rhythm, and, lastly, in at least the three
cases of Caxton, Fisher, and Berners, set itself to work
to achieve definite rhetoric to see whether the "fair
language of French" and the stately language of Latin
could not find, in English, something not so ill correspond-
ing to them. 1

In reviewing these periods and their work we found
that, in the first and older, there was not a little remark-
able achievement in passage, though less in phrase, but
that it could not produce a great work of prose, nor
even, despite ALlfric, a great and assured master of prose.
We found that the second, towards its end, in the Morte
d* Arthur and in Malory, did produce both the one and
the other. But we saw also that this was a sort of
windfall of the Ages as well as of the Muses the half
miraculous swan-song of a dying period of history and a
dying state of literature, for which one man had, as it
were, been chosen and called to be the special exponent,
and which nobody but William Morris, and he by a sort
of white magic, was ever really to recover. Lastly, we
saw in Berners who at other times has something of
Malory's charm, though less of his genius no longer the
dying swan of the past, but the ugly duckling which is
to be the living swan of the future, which now swatters
and swashes and swaps in ungainly gymnastics of
rhetoric such rhetoric as Leonard Coxe is about more
formally to introduce to English, and Thomas Wilson to
take up later.

As before, however, and in constantly increasing Continuance
measure, it is the wash and counterwash of different i

eddies and tides of influence that polishes and forms Cambridge
the ceaselessly vexed pebbles of style. There is, in the
first place, this definitely technical or rhetorical element,

1 I must apologise to any one who sees mere repetition of the Interchapter
in this and the next paragraph ; but it seemed to me that, in a matter so
little trite, a summary of the summary might not be superfluous or impertinent.

ii6 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

which, as we shall see, shapes itself with a curious twist in
the so-called " Cambridge School " Ascham, Wilson, and
their friend and slightly elder, Cheke. There is the con-
tinuing and ever-increasing importance of the successive
translations of the Bible, starting with a distinct contri-
bution of personal and individual genius in Tyndale, and
winding up with an unequalled example of combined
energy and skill in the Authorised Version. 1 There is a
mass of other translation from French, Italian, Spanish,
German, Dutch all affecting the general complexion of
the literature, and to no small extent, though to the
wrath of the Cambridge men, directly enriching the
vocabulary. There is the immense multiplication of
subject of which a sort of exhibition in little may be
found in the curious literature of the so-called Pamphlet.
In particular, under this head, there is the growth of
fiction : the novella at first rather than the novel or the
full romance, 2 but still fiction. And finally, there is the
presence, at last, of an astonishingly large number of men
of distinct and individual genius, and (which is perhaps
more really astonishing) of a multitude of men of more
than ordinary talent, who all, consciously or unconsciously,
put their hands to the work.

Cheke : his The position of the three Cambridge scholars mentioned

bankruptcy a b ove j s a curious one, and though in part founded on a
fallacy, it was not unfortunate for English. The con-
ception of it was probably due to Cheke, who, though he
wrote little or nothing original, was a man of distinctly
original genius, if one with the, in genius, not infrequent
touch of the " crank." Among the " sports " of his wit he
bestowed on England the inestimable blessing of teaching
her to pronounce Greek so as to bring out the beauty of

1 This latter lying beyond the strict period of this chapter, the whole
subject (except in so far as Tyndale, Coverdale partly, and Cranmer are
concerned) will be postponed to the next.

2 The full-grown romance does continue, and at length, after the Amadis
translations of Anthony Munday and others, passes into the rather more
original work of Emanuel Ford Parismns and Parismenus and the rest.
But, except in the remarkable exceptions of the Arcadia and Euphues, each
to be the subject of separate and substantive notice, it has little or nothing
to do with style or rhythm.

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 117

Greek poetry to an English ear. 1 This wisdom, however,
was no doubt connected with his main and favourite folly
of " keeping our tongue undefiled " not in the Chaucerian
way at all, but by a process exactly the reverse of
Chaucer's by refusing admission to all foreign elements,
and actually expelling those that existed. I am not so
exhaustively acquainted with his works which, though
not individually important, are numerous and not easy of
access as to know whether he ever refers to Pecock, a
writer who, as we saw, was much taken up, from the point
of matter, by the extreme reformers. But his principles,
and his practice in his translation of the Gospel of St.
Matthew, are much in line with " about -writing" and
" before-bar." The principle itself is roundly stated in his
rather well-known Letter to Sir Thomas Hoby : " I am
of opinion that our own tongue should be written clean
and pure, unmixed and unmangled with borrowing from
other tongues, wherein, if we take not heed by time, ever
borrowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her
house as bankrupt."

The Elizabethans loved parables, and knew the its fallacy.
Scriptures, so that one might have aptly asked Sir John
Cheke whether, after the process of borrowing jewels of
silver and jewels of gold from the Egyptians, Israel was
in much danger of bankruptcy. Yet perhaps even this is
not a strong enough demurrer by analogy ; for, if the
Red Sea had not closed the account, there might have
been some danger of resumption there. But what possible
" paying back " can there be in such a case as this ? The
language borrowed from is none the poorer ; the language
borrowing is at once, and (if the word suits and lives)
permanently, the richer. The lender does not want his
loan back with or without usury, for he loses nothing ; the
borrower neither need nor, if he would, could restore it
though he may not improbably give something in
exchange. These foreign borrowings were, in fact, the

1 It, of course, may be a mere coincidence that literary appreciation of this
poetry, as distinguished from mere philology, has been keener, more constant,
and more widely spread in England than in any other country. But if there
is no causal connection, it is odd.

Ii8 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

food of the older English tongue itself, causing it to live
and grow and flourish. It may, perhaps, now and then
have taken a surfeit of them ; but in that case nature will
provide just as it does in other cases, and the superfluity
will be got rid of by disuse. One might ask Sir John,
again, how about the borrowed debauchery of " opinion "
and " bankrupt," and why he did not pay back this gold
of Achan at once and stick to "deeming" (he has the
verb elsewhere) and " bench-breaking " ?

Wilson and So, too, the second of the group, Thomas or Sir
terms'" Thomas Wilson, undoubtedly indulges too far in his de-
nunciation 1 of "ink-horn terms" (a fashionable phrase of the
time, obviously enough metaphored), by which he does not
so much mean Latinisms as technicalities, foreign words
generally, archaisms, and, in fact, all Aristotle's %eva as
opposed to his Kvpta. Once more, the demurrer has to
be put, "If you are going to reject all these, how are you
to enrich your vocabulary? How are you to avoid the
fatal ' stationary state ' ? " Before Wilson's death there
was born a certain William Shakespeare, not the least of
whose weapons of supremacy was the absolute equanim-
ity, and the unfailing resource, with which he borrowed,
made, revived, anticipated new and old vocabulary, using
technicalities in such a fashion that innocent folk think he
must have been of the various crafts, coining words like
" unwedgeable," the parallels to which at this day make
prudish critics gasp and gibber ; borrowing, like the very
spendthrifts of his fellow -dramatists, and spending the
benevolences he levies without stint of degree, or reck
of consequence.

And yet, once more, there is the excuse for Wilson
that excess in any one direction of this kind of xenomania
is undoubtedly dangerous and offensive ; that excess in
all kinds of it would be positively loathsome if only (to
keep precisely to our special sheep) that the rhythm
resulting would be too composite and not enough
symphonic.

1 Art of Rhetoric, Bk. iii. "Sir" Thomas by the custom and courtesy of
literary history. The D.N.B. un-knights him.

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 119

For it would be alike uncritical, unhistorical, and The excuses,
unjust to neglect the fact that there was, at the time
especially, considerable excuse for this touchiness or
touch-me-not-ishness on the part of scholars, jealous of
the honour and welfare of English. The fifteenth century
was not long past, and the fifteenth century (with the
earlier sixteenth following it in its doubtful course) had,
as has been said, been the time of what are called in
French literary history the grands rhetoriqueurs of what
is called in English literary history " aureate diction."
This had to be brought within reasonable limits. It was
not desirable that English should follow the French
patterns of Chastellain and Robertet to the hardly
caricatured jargon which (on suggestion from Geoffroy
Tory) Rabelais has preserved for the laughter and de-
lectation of eternity in the mouth of the Limousin
scholar. It was not desirable that people should be
encouraged to write lines, in verse, like

Mirror of fructuous intendiment,

and abuse, in prose, terminology like that of the early
Englishings of the Imitation. It was specially undesir-
able from our own special point of view ; for over-
Latinising would have destroyed the composite rhythm
which was being elaborated, and have substituted a dull
copying of the single rhythm of Latin itself. In so far as
the protests of Cheke and his comrades were prompted,
consciously or unconsciously, by the fear of this, they
were perfectly right ; but, as usual, they were enlarged
and exaggerated into generalisations, which were all but
perfectly wrong.

Both Cheke and Wilson justified their censures by Ascham.
their practices, though neither was a very great writer
of English. And to see what the school could do, but in
the matter not of mere criticism but of positive craftsman-
ship, one had better turn to their fellow, good Roger
Ascham, of whom wise judges of literature will not think
the worse because he, forgetting literature itself for the
while, uttered that blasphemy against the Morte d? Arthur

120 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

which has been referred to above. The gods had not made
Ascham romantic ; and they had made him of not very
subtle wit, but a proper moral man, a Protestant (though
with a certain further protestantism as to the value of his
own skin), and a typical Renaissance scholar of the less
precious kind, with a thoroughly #scholarly contempt for
the Middle Ages. So that he simply knew not what he
did or said when he spoke against Malory. On the other
hand, he knew very well what he said and did when he
wrote that " English matter " the Toxophilus " in the
English tongue for Englishmen," and the sentence more
than sets off the other as far as his literary balance-sheet
is concerned.

That Ascham's style, however simple-looking, is, as
usual, " not so simple as it looks " is sufficiently shown by
the very different general notions which have been held
respecting it and its place in the family-tree of English
prose style generally some making room for it in the
ancestry of Lyly, some in that of Hooker. As is usual,
again, both views are possible and arguable ; but to the
present writer the Hooker lineage seems by far the
clearest and most certain. If you take Fisher before,
Hooker after, and Latimer as a trace-horse running with
a very loose rein at the side, using also his own, Cheke's,
and Wilson's observations to help your vision, the origin
and the object of Ascham's writing will soon become clear.
To begin with, he is under the ostensibly, but by no
means really, or at least wholly, contradictory influences of
the rhetorical system that of employing the traditional
technical methods of accomplishing and heightening prose
and the principle of being unflinchingly " English."
The mother-tongue may learn how to spend her money,
but she must not borrow ; she may make new furniture
out of her own wood, cook the products of her fields and
farms and fish-ponds in new ways, but not import out-
landish goods or foreign delicacies. Thus you will find
in Ascham curious and (one is bound to say) rather
artificial rhetorical arrangements, like the parallel contor-
tions (to get homceoteleuton) of the passage about the

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 121

causes of not shooting, 1 and a practically universal aiming
at balance ; but, side by side with these, you will find an
abundance, and almost a superabundance, of the intensest
English ornament of all alliteration. The combined
rhythm that results may be estimated from the following
passages :

It is your shame (I speak to you all, you young gentlemen of
England) that one maid should go beyond you all in excellency of
learning and knowledge of divers tongues. Point forth six of the
best given gentlemen of this court, and all they together show not so
much good will, spend not so much time, bestow not so many hours
daily, orderly, and constantly, for the increase of learning and know-
ledge, as doth the Queen's Majesty herself. Yea, I believe, that
beside her perfect readiness in Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish,
she readeth here now at Windsor more Greek every day, than some
prebendary of this church doth read Latin in a whole week. And
that which is most praiseworthy of all, within the walls of her privy
chamber, she hath obtained that excellency of learning to understand,
speak, and write both wittily with head, and fair with hand, as scarce
one or two rare wits in both the universities have in many years
reached unto. Amongst all the benefits that God hath blessed me
withal, next the knowledge of Christ's true religion, I count this the
greatest, that it pleased God to call me to be one poor minister in
setting forward these excellent gifts of learning in this most excellent
prince ; whose only example if the rest of our nobility would follow,
then might England be for learning and wisdom in nobility, a
spectacle to all the world beside. But see the mishap of men ; the
best examples have never such force to move to any goodness, as
the bad, vain, light, and fond have to all illness.

There is not much alliteration here, though a paragraph
lower down will show both it and the Fisherian doublets.
The actual passage above (which no doubt Ascham
polished as best he could, to make the flattery of the
substance more agreeable to its subject) is, if any one will
examine it, singularly well arranged as to accumula-
tion of short with long sentences (Ascham elsewhere
sometimes rather abuses short ones). And in individual
instances the cadence, though far from elaborate, is very

well-sufficing. It opens with a fourth paeon, " It is your

1 " Young children use not ; young men . . . dare not; sage men . . .
will not ; aged men . . . cannot," and so for a dozen clauses more.
(Toxophilus, ed. Arber, p. 48.)

122 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

shame " ; and though for the most part it requires none
but dissyllabic or trisyllabic feet to scan it, there are a
fair number of paeonic sprinklings throughout

Although, therefore, Ascham's rhythm is not, as a rule,
very elaborate or delightful, and though both the allitera-
tion and some of the classical tricks are occasionally
overdone, it must be pretty obvious that there is here,
first, the foundation, and not a little of the actual struc-
ture, of a general style with good working and fair
ornamental qualities ; secondly, the possibility of much
further development in both directions. There is already
balance the first great instrument of rhythm ; and there
is, in the longer sentences, an approach to that undulation
that substitution of a curve made of minor and con-
trasted curves for sharp " roof-of-the-house " ascent and
descent which in no very long time Hooker was 'to
master. For much in the Schoolmaster Ascham deserves
well, in almost the highest degree, of English scholarship,
especially for his prescription of translation and retransla-
tion from and into Latin undoubtedly the surest (if not
the only) way to master English writing. 1 But in himself,
and as an example, he deserves even more. I always have
thought, and always shall think, that the titles of " Father
of this," " Father of that," in literature, are delusive and
rather puerile. But if they are to be admitted, I should
certainly assign that of " Father of English Prose " rather
to Ascham than to Wyclif, 2 in regard to whom it is very
nearly absurd, or to More, who (some people really seem
to forget it) wrote the Utopia in Latin, and did not in
anything else (for the Richard III. has been wildly
over-praised, and the Pamphlets are mostly abuse or

1 The late Mr. Charles Neate, who was not only an economist and poli-
tician, but an excellent scholar in both ancient and modern languages, was
once examining the upper forms of one of the larger Tudor grammar-schools.
He commented on the goodness of the' English in the papers, and asked if
the subject was regularly taught. The headmaster told him that it was not,
but that he and his senior classical assistant were very particular about trans-
lation. " I thought so," said Neate, "and there's no way like it."

2 As to Chaucer, see above, p. 75. But you can "have. many fathers"
in this sense, and Chaucer is father in a stage further back, while Wyclif is
hardly so in any.

FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 123

technical logomachy) do much of real importance in
English.

For one of More's pamphlet-opponents, however, and
for the first of Wyclifs successors, a very great position,
if not exactly as an original writer, has sometimes been
claimed.

I have, I think, seen it stated somewhere that William Tyndaie.
Tyndale founded the rhythm and cadence of the English
Bible. This is a great claim, and it has to be examined.
To some extent it must be admitted offhand ; for Tyn-
dale's versions of the New Testament and of the Penta-
teuch were the first in English l since Wyclifs (with which
they have very little in common), while with the later
versions (comparison of all of the most important of which,
save the " Bishops'" of 1568, is facilitated by Bagster's
English Hexapld) his connections are very close indeed.
Let us take as an instance a short but fine and well-
known passage Rom. xiii. II, I2. 2

Here there is no evidence that Tyndale had as much
as seen Wyclif; while it is perfectly obvious that all
his four successors have seen Tyndale. The Vulgate has
given Wyclif "praecessit " for 7r/>oe/njrez/, and he takes it
rather literally and uninspiredly. Tyndale, with the Greek
before him, tries (for him rather lamely) " is passed," and

1 I put aside, as derivative and not capital in literature, the otherwise
interesting Scots version of Purvey by Nisbet (S.T.S., 3 vols. 1901-5).

2 Wye. (spelling only modernised, missing suffixes bracketed, and obsolete
words or parts of -words italicised). For now our health is near[er] than when
we believedif. The night went before, but the day hath nighed, therefore cast
we away the works of darkness, and be we clothed with the armours of light.

Tyn. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night
is passed, and the day is come nigh. Let us therefore cast away the deeds
of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

Cranmer [?] (the "Great"). For now is our salvation nearer than when
we believed. The night is past, the day is come nigh. Let us therefore
cast away the deeds of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

Geneva. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed it. The
night is passed, and the day hath come to us : let us therefore cast away the
deeds of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

Rheims. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The
night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works
of darkness and do on the armour of light.

A. V. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The
night is far spent, the day is aj; hand : let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

124 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

though there is an evident discrepancy between this and
the next words, the Englishmen who got the " Great "
Bible almost literally out of the fire at Paris, and the hot
gospellers of Geneva, and the reactionaries of Rheims
obediently take it from him. It is true that the Author-
ised Version, with that extraordinary inspiration which
belongs to it, arrives at the huge improvement both in
sense and sound of " is far spent," but the rest of the
passage is still Tyndalian.

More remarkable still is the beginning of the next
chapter. 1 Wyclif has a very weak and clumsy rendering, 2
not worthy of the Vulgate. 3 But Tyndale sees at once
the advantage given by the opening Greek pronoun, and
grasps it : " Him that is weak in the faith receive unto you."
Coverdale has the sense to keep it exactly, and the Great
Bible (which is largely Coverdale) ditto. Geneva restores
" take " for " receive," and Rheims, putting in an unneces-
sary "And him," which the Vulgate does not authorise and
the Greek only permits, omits " the " before " faith." The
Authorised Version, reverting wisely, for it makes better
rhythm, to " receive," omits " unto," which, considering the
" re " of " receive," seems unnecessary. The whole " cast "
in all five and in the " Bishops' " is Tyndale's. Nor is it
in mere word-for-word selection that there is this disciple-
ship. I have no ecstatic affection for the " B. Refor-
mation " and its martyrs ; and I began this detailed
enquiry certainly with no prejudice in favour of Tyndale.
His original work, though my friend Professor Ker may
be right in pleading that it is a little less foul-mouthed than
the ordinary Billingsgate of the pious rebels and their
equally pious and equally foul-mouthed adversaries, has
no very special quality. It is rather like Fisher dis-
playing a certain rudimentary rhetoric learnt from Latin,
with many groups of synonyms and so forth. But as a
translator he certainly caught and rendered the rhythm of
Hebrew and of the " common " Greek in a most remarkable

1 rbv 5 affBfvovvra r-rj iriffTti

2 " But take ye a sick man in belief."

3 " Infirmum autem in fidem assumite."

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 125

fashion ; and in both cases (for it is scarcely necessary
now to rebut the silly and unscholarly depreciation of
the latter dialect as " bad " Greek) he administered a
sovereign cordial to English.

Of Tyndale's colleague, successor, and (as one may The Prayer-
call it) literary executor, Coverdale, and of their followers
in the work of translating the Bible until the Authorised
Version, it will probably be better not to speak till we
come to that Version itself, at the beginning of the next
chapter. But something should be added here on the
almost equally remarkable accomplishment and example
given to English prose rhythm by the slightly younger
Book of Common Prayer. The version of the Psalms
therein included has been preferred by some to that in
King James's book ; but this is a fallacy, partly one of
affection, from the familiarity of this beautiful composition
in all states and conditions of life, and partly one of
want of distinction. The Prayer-Book version is better
for " singing or saying " its original purpose ; l it is not
better to read. But when we think of the Prayer-Book
as a model of style and a treasury of rhythm, we usually
and rightly think of its Collects, Prayers, and other similar
exercises. That the matter of these is to a large extent
taken from Missal and Breviary is, of course, a matter
equally of course ; but, as I have so frequently pointed
out, even literal translations require genius in the trans-
lator to carry with them any of the formal beauties of
style especially of rhythm and these are sometimes
very far from literal translations, or indeed translations at
all. Their singular and almost inimitable beauty 2 has
been admitted by all competent judges, and by some

1 Its extraordinary beauty for these purposes is well known. "The

rivers | of the flood thereof | shall make glad | the city | of God " is one of
a dozen examples which simply offer themselves in the Psalms for the day
on which I write this note.

2 I believe the late Bishop Dowden of Edinburgh, who was no mean
hand at such things himself, and was one of the most widely-read liturgical
scholars in the kingdom, used to say that nobody had ever quite caught the
tone except Miss Christina Rossetti, in Time Flies and The Face of the
Deep. I certainly had always thought so myself, and indeed may have to
some extent put my own words into his mouth.

126 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

entirely impartial ones. There has been a tendency to
assign the authorship as far as such a thing can be
assigned to one man to Cranmer. Some special points
alleged, such as the combination of " Saxon " and Latin
words, are, as we have seen, generations older, and were
used by almost all serious prose writers of the time.
Nor do I, in such original work of the Archbishop's as I
have read, see anything very distinctly pointing to this
achievement. The Preface of the " Great " Bible of
1540 is certainly very good, and an example from it
might be given ; but, except in a certain " quietism " of
style which is rather suggestive of Hooker than of the
Bible, its rhythm does not remind me much of the
Collects. Of course the shortness of these documents as
wholes invites, and in fact compels, brevity of clause and
sentence (Cranmer's own work is rather inclined to long
sentences), and, to any good craftsman, must suggest an
adroit use of balance. But brevity has the Scylla and the
Charybdis of obscurity and of baldness ever waiting for it ;
and balance those of monotonous clock-beat and tedious
parallelism. The ship is safe through all these in such
things as the exquisite symmetry of the Absolution
(which might be strengthened in substance, but could
hardly be bettered in form) at the very opening, as the
quiet dismissal to repose of the Prayer of St. Chrysostom, 1
as the incomparable sentences of the Burial Service, or as
such triumphs of symphony in miniature as the Collects

1 This very remarkable piece, which, I believe, was taken straight from
the Greek, not only allows itself to be scanned with unusual confidence, but
makes it, in a still more unusual manner, possible to observe some method in
the music :

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 127

for the First Sunday in Advent, for Palm Sunday, and
Trinity Sunday ; and as (greatest in subject, not least in
power), the Prayer of Consecration in the Eucharist.

Very few readers or hearers of this last, unless actually
informed of the fact, would think or believe that while
the first part is, if not entirely original, a cento of new
and old, the later part the actual consecration is almost
word for word from the Canon Missae, with a few unim-
portant omissions, such as that (doctrinally unimportant,
but not so aesthetically) of feebly rhetorical amplifica-
tions, like in sanctas et venerabiles manus suas after
accepit, and praedarum before calicem. The whole is to
the ear like a seamless coat to the eye, and though I
must, for obvious reasons, decline to quote and scan it
here, I believe the actual music of its rhythm must have
communicated itself to millions of fit ears, whenever they
were allowed to hear it.

One famous figure of the Reformation, who is also one Latimer.
of the most remarkable of English writers at this or any
time a writer who, with Bunyan, Defoe, and Cobbett,
composes a class, and something like a " first class,"
all to itself in general English prose style, hardly requires
much notice here. Hugh Latimer was a born orator of
the vernacular type ; and it is almost impossible to read
two sentences of any work of his without reading them
(or rather speaking them) aloud. Now, of course, the
ancients applied rhythmical tests to oratory itself indeed,
they mostly based their studies of rhythm in prose on
oratorical examples. But whether it be the case with
other modern nations and languages does not in this place
matter it certainly is the case with English, that elabor-
ately " periodised " oratory is not liked, and therefore not
common. Everybody has heard that " Burke was a dinner-
bell," and most people know the remark, attributed to

Fox, that if a speech read well " it must have been a

bad speech." This may be exaggerated, and we shall
find some later instances where spoken prose has remark-
able rhythm ; some even where written prose has to be
spoken in order to bring the rhythm out. But Latimer's

128 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

is not of this type. It is with the tags of erudition
obligatory at the time, and with a few flights of conven-
tional rhetoric mainly conversational and narrative, with
the breaks, the continuances, the even or accidented flow,
necessary to narrative and conversation. These are not
the conditions that bring out the phenomena that we
are studying ; and though there is everywhere in the
universally known passage describing his childhood and
his father's farm, in the grim suggestion of the " judge's
skin " as a desirable sign and token in England, in a
hundred others perfect command of natural flow, it
would be rather out of place to apply scansion-tests to it.
Profane Until a comparatively short time ago the " profane "

translations. EH za bethan translations (though they had been greatly
tasted by men like Southey and Lamb, a hundred years
since, and though at least two of them, North's Plutqrch
and Florio's Montaigne, have always been quasi-classics)
were mainly regarded as curiosities. The late Mr. Henley,
however, made them the object of one of his numerous
enthusiasms enthusiasms the " strong contagion " of
which, on other and especially younger men, exceeded
anything that is on record for the past two generations at
least, if not for much longer. The handsome reprints of
them which he superintended made some of them at least
much better known ; and very high estimates of their
position and influence in English prose have sometimes
been put forth. These redemptions of past neglect are
apt to be a little extravagant, and extravagance in this
particular respect has not been wanting. But undoubtedly
they are often delectable ; and, as a whole, from the
historical point of view they are never negligible. Under-
taken as they were by their authors under the double
influence of reverence for the classics and a not inconsider-
able taste for the moderns, together with an eager desire
to expand English literature ; and received as they were by
their readers in a similar temper, they could not but exer-
cise influence. And that influence in the circumstances,
though of a somewhat mixed, could not fail to be of a
powerful and in many ways beneficial kind. Its greatest

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 129

benefit, though at the same time its not least danger, was
the flood of new language and phrase that it poured into
our lexicon. The fertile and irregular Elizabethan genius,
avid of conceit, impatient of drab-coloured and pedestrian
style, found, in the large number of new things and
thoughts that it had to interpret, an excuse for borrowing
and coining word and phrase in a literally extravagant
fashion and degree.

The general characteristics of these translations have
been well summed up by Mr. Whibley, 1 but may be
abbreviated still further, into a single short sentence, as
extreme vernacularity in diction tempered by the sense of
exotic matter and thought. It is doubtless true that in
many cases (some say most) they did not even trouble
themselves to go to Latin, far less Greek, originals, but
contented themselves, as North notably did, with French
or Latin half-way houses. Their productions are a store-
house of the quaintest slang, and exhibit word-coinage
and word-importation of a kind which would make a
certain class of modern critics scold if they were atrabilious,
cover their faces with the skirts of their garments if they
were sensitive, and apologise for the criminal author if
they were good-naturedly officious. Yet something of
the ancient form comes direct, or through the French and
Latin ; and of necessity far more of the ancient thought
and matter passes into the English, with a subtly varying,
though not wholly transforming, influence. Most of
them came before Euphuism, and Lyly was himself
probably a better scholar than most. But if they did
not exercise any direct influence on his manner he
certainly represents, to no small extent, the same in-
fluences that acted on them. Only the variety of their
originals, and the fact that French has never very much
affected balance of an obvious kind, saved them from
the teasing over-indulgence in that rhetorical trick which
is at once one great characteristic, and one serious draw-
back, of his style.

1 In his introductory notice to the examples of them contained in Sir
Henry Craik's English Prose, vol. i. pp. 335 and 349.

130 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.
Lyiyand Indeed, high as is the importance of Lyly in the

Euphuism, ,. r-r-i-i. t i 11 -i. j

its failure in history of English prose style generally, it drops very
rhythm. much in that of prose rhythm. From his plays it might

be possible to pick out some things of merit and interest,

as here :

name | of wavering, | waxing, j and waning ! | Is she inconstant that
keepeth a settled course, which since her first creation altereth not

virtue, | be accounted | fickle | for increasing | and decreasing ?
Flowers in their buds are nothing worth till they be blown ; nor
blossoms accounted till they be ripe fruit ; and shall we then say
they be changeable, for that they grow from seeds to leaves, from
leaves to buds, from buds to their perfection ? then, why be not
twigs that become trees, children that become men, and mornings
that grow to evenings, termed wavering, for that they continue not
at one stay ? Ay, but Cynthia being in her fulness decayeth, as not
delighting in her greatest beauty, or withering when she should be
most honoured. When malice cannot object anything, folly will ;
making that a vice which is the greatest virtue. What thing (my
mistress excepted) being in the pride of her beauty, and latter minute

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 131

would conspire | to ravish | thee. | But thou, to abate the pride of
our affections, dost detract from thy perfections ; thinking it sufficient
if once in a month we enjoy a glimpse of thy majesty ; and then, to
increase our griefs, thou dost decrease thy gleams ; coming out of
thy royal robes, wherewith thou dazzlest our eyes, down into thy
swath clouts, beguiling our eyes ; and then

The whole here l is very far from contemptible, and
the fragments scanned are sometimes of great and subtle
beauty, though the effect is still nearly always traceable
to balance and antithesis of a less obtrusive and mechanical
character than in Euphues itself. In that actual book the
everlasting see-saw of antithetic balance almost inevitably
spoils the rhythm which it is intended to provide.
One is tempted, and perhaps the temptation need not be
resisted, to arrange the sentences in parallel sticks?

If the course of youth had any The unhappiness of man's con-
respect for the staff of age, dition.

Or the living man any regard to Or the untowardness of his
the dying mould, crooked nature,

We would with greater care than Or the wilfulness of his mind,

when we were young, Or the blindness of his heart,

Shun those things that should That in youth he surfeiteth with
grieve us when we be old : delights,

And with more severity direct Preventing age,

the sequel of our life Or if he live, continueth in

For the fear of present death. dotage,

But such is either Fighting death.

This passage, not to be unfair, I have taken almost
at random, without seeking for more exaggerated examples,
though (as every one with even a tincture of Euphues
his various exercitations will admit) it would be easy to
find instances much more glaring. With what fatal ease
the fantastic " unnatural-history " parallels, which we find
in Spanish as far back at least 3 as the Arch-priest of Hita,
lend themselves to this arrangement as of a kind of

1 Part unscanned, that the reader may read it with his scansion.

8 Which themselves (as again could best be shown by different coloured
inks or forms of type) are constructed of parallel sub-clauses, phrases, and
even single words and letters.

3 And much earlier in Latin ; but in any vernacular ?

132 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

chunky parquetry (it is too coarse for mosaic) is also
matter of common knowledge ; and it should occur,
without much prompting, to any one that there is in
it more than the suggestion, not merely of Bacon's
sententious style in the later part of the same generation,
but of Dr. Johnson's, nearly two hundred years later still.
In all there is the same drawback. There is rhythm ;
but its perpetual correspondences, more or less clumsily
fulfilled, defeat the purpose, fail to pay the debt, of the
elusive, undulating, and continually various harmony of
prose.

But it is only fair to give another passage, much
better and pretty free from the most teasing peculiarities
of the author, whether that the general influence of his
original (for in this part he is sometimes almost trans-
lating Plutarch) has a good effect on him, or for ome
accidental cause :

There are three things [ which cause | perfection | in man |
Nature, | Reason, | Use. Reason | I call | Discipline, | Use | Exer-
cise, j if any one | of these branches | want, | certainly | the Tree |
of Virtue | must needs | wither. | For Nature without Discipline is
of small force, and Discipline without Nature more feeble : if Exercise
or Study be void of any of these, it availeth nothing. For as in
tilling of the ground and husbandry there is first chosen a fertile soil,
then a cunning sower, then good seed ; even so must we compare
Nature to the fat earth, the expert husbandman to the schoolmaster,
the faculties and sciences to the pure seeds. If this order had not
been in our predecessors, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and whomso-
ever was renowned in Greece for the glory of wisdom, they had
never been eternished l for wise men, neither canonised, as it were,
for Saints among those that study sciences. It is therefore | almost

evident
endued

man | is most miserable. | But if there be any one that thinketh Wit
not necessary to the obtaining of Wisdom, after he hath gotten the
way to Virtue by Industry and Exercise, he is an Heretic, in my
opinion, touching the true faith of learning. For if Nature play not
her part, in vain is labour ; and, as I said before, if Study be not
employed, in vain is Nature. Sloth turneth the edge of wit : Study

1 This excellent word ought to have been kept, for it supplies an invaluable
rhythmical variant on "eternised." I have here, as I may do elsewhere,
in part divided without scanning the feet. The purpose is similar to that
indicated above.

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 133

sharpeneth the mind : a thing be it never so easy is hard to the
idle ; a thing be it never so hard is easy to the wit well employed.

And most plainly we see in many things | the efficacy | of industry |
and labour. 1

But, again excepting the plays, where there are short
prose passages of no small beauty, it must be repeated
that Lyly contributes little directly to the advancement
of English prose rhythm. Indirectly, however, virtue is
to be counted unto him even here, and in not so very
indirect a way. For, after all, whatever be the foibles of
Euphuism, it stands for the first deliberate and elaborate
attempt at making prose ornamental, and bringing it into
definite decorative order. It corresponds, therefore, to
some extent with the earlier labours of Wyatt and Surrey
and their successors in regard to verse, though the parallel
must not be forced too far. It is, on the whole, a failure,
though an interesting failure ; but it is also at the worst
a symptom and forerunner, at the best a kind of early
stage, of the magnificent developments which, almost at
the same time, were being reached in a different way by
Hooker which were shortly, or before very long, to be
reached in the same way, bettered in good points and
reformed in bad, by Raleigh and Greville and Donne, by
the strange co-operative triumph of the Authorised Version,
and by the final achievement of Milton and Taylor and
Browne.

1 It is curious and worth noting that this dignified and excellently
rhythmical passage which will be recognised by all educated persons as a
commonplace, in the good sense, of ancient thought, and may suggest to some
the palmary expression of it by the comic poet Simylus is followed by one
of Lyly's wildest debauches of mere snipsnap alliterative antithesis, fed by
"unnatural history," stock-classical anecdote, and vernacular phrase.

In the scansions above there are several things that the observant reader
will, it is hoped, also note, such as the final diminuendo of foot-length
dochmiac, paeon, amphibrach (5, 4, 3) ; v. inf. App. III. He may try
some of the rest for himself, and may also consider the objection, " Is there

not an attempt at Latin 'numerous' prose here? Does not "industry and |

labour" remind us of esse vide\atur! I myself am of opinion that, by this
time at any rate, the "strong nativity" of English had overborne Latin
rhythm both in prose and verse ; but others think, and may think, differ-
ently. ( V. sup, p. 9 note, and inf. p. 1 40 note. )

134 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.
Hooker. His From what we know of Lyly it is pretty certain that

achievement. ,. . r i 1^.1. ^i

any peculiarity of his, whether in thought, matter, or
style, whether in poetry or prose, was deliberate and
conscious. From what we know of Hooker it is positively
certain that, except a partly scholarly and partly pious
determination to do his best on a great subject, little
thought tending to mere ornamentation, and none at all
of personal display, entered into his style-making. Indeed,
it is probably by far the best way to take him as a
representative of the plain style originally regularised by
Ascham, but sublimated to its utmost possible by in-
dividual genius and by the warm atmosphere of the time.
Study and the most intelligent study of Latin and of
Greek must indeed have gone to the formation of his
pellucid and almost Attic grace and simplicity ; but that
this grace was in any way aimed at as separate* and
conscious " beautification " is unthinkable. Yet to what
an extraordinary height never yet trodden by any
English writer of prose he raised himself, must be per-
ceived almost at once, by any one fitted with the necessary
organs, when the Ecclesiastical Polity is read. One-sided
admirers of the flamboyant have indeed objected to this
style as too simple ; and have contrasted with its archi-
tectural or even sculpturesque character the almost baroque
luxuriance, tangled with tropic bloom of phrase, which
they find in Jeremy Taylor. The wiser taste relishes and
admires both, but certainly does not give the lesser place
to Hooker. Let us take a passage : and I do not think,
though many others might easily be selected, a better can
be found than that which I took, but did not fully analyse
from the present point of view, nearly a quarter of a
century ago in writing the History of Elizabethan
Literature :

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 135

1 I.e. assays.

2 The "up" can be included in a dochmiac if any one likes, "lieth

folded up."

3 This is one of the pieces (see App. III.) where I think "word-splitting"

better. But " the very out- ward " is quite possible.

136 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Rhythm- Here there are divers things, besides the extraordinary

sweep. inevitableness of the scansion, to be noticed two especially.

The first which if any one should not notice, it is to be
feared that he had better not waste any more time in this
study is the adaptation of the periodic structure of
classical sentence to a large periodic rhythm ; the abrupter
and more intrusive parallelism or balance, as we find it
in Lyly and others, being widened, softened, and moulded
out into great undulating sweeps of phrase, rising, hovering,
descending, with a wing-like motion. The particular flights
in this special instance are rather long, but Hooker else-
where shows himself perfectly well acquainted with the
advantages of associating long with short sentences.
Probably he did not do so here because he felt, con-
sciously or unconsciously, that very short ones would give
an abrupt and staccato effect, instead of the soothing
sweetness, long drawn out, which suited his subject,
and fingering The second device is a complementary one ; but one
which would not have occurred as a complement to any one
but a man of genius, or a fortunate student possessing
exactly what Hooker did not possess, a museum of models
before him. It consists in using what may be called the
" title-word " of the subject " Rest " as a sort of key-
note or dominant of the music a pivot or stepping-stone
of the motion. The word itself, even independently of,
but much more with, its meaning, is an important and
beautiful one, 2 and the critical certainty of its being pro-

1 There is hardly a passage behind us which scans itself so "straight-off"
as this ; and there will not be many such in front of us.

2 It is therefore scarcely in the least surprising that the Revisers who
touched nothing that they did not deface and defile intruded the unnecessary
word "sabbath" before it in the famous passage of Heb. iv. 9, "There remaineth
therefore a rest to the people of God." Here they do not even deserve the
miserable encomium of composing a better "crib" for illiterate clergy than
the Authorised ; for there is only one word in the Greek, (ra^/Jcmcr^j, and I
never knew that -ayxos meant "rest," while I have always been told that
<r6.ppa.TQv did. And King James's men had already cared for the Greekless,
abundantly and much more exactly, by putting " a keeping of a sabbath " in
the margin.

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 137

nounced with a strong pause (or " rest " in the other sense)
by any good speaker or reader, gives it additional power.

Hooker, it will be observed, does not bring it in too
soon. He does not, in particular, begin with it, as a
writer given to the lower and showier rhetoric might have
been tempted to do. He does not bring it in very often :
lest the delicate effect might be weakened. The first
sentence is without it ; the mind's ear is kept expectant
of the particular example of " variety, dependency, order,"
that the author is thinking of. But it comes at the very
centre or summit of the second, and satisfies the past
expectation, while prompting more. In the third sentence
the word again hides itself, " folded up " (as in the actual
phrase) with " that final benefit wherein our perfect felicity
and bliss lieth," as in a paraphrase or parable. But it
emerges again at the last, basing the beginning and
supporting the end of the first clause, while ushering in
the magnificent definition of Rest itself, which completes
and concludes the paragraph.

In another famous passage, that on the sanctions of
Law, Hooker varies his sentence -lengths much more;
indeed, the whole context is much longer, and does not
attempt the same elaborate but intense harmony. He is
arguing here, and driving his argument home, not indulging
in relevant but half-dreamy meditation and illustration.
But he uses the second device of repetition of the principal
word more than ever. Here the word "law" itself how
different-sounding from "rest"- is employed daringly,
hammered in, and redoubled with an almost rattling peal
of argument, as aggressive as Hooker's can ever be.
Sixteen or seventeen times in a page does the word recur,
and yet there is no monotonous effect ; each hammer-blow
drives in a successive and different rivet, and yet the
whole is no mere clatter, but a martial music. It is,
however, perhaps less characteristic than the following
one of the most exquisite " Evening Voluntaries " of
English prose :

That there is somewhat higher than either of these two, no
other proof doth need than the very process of man's desire,

138 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

which being natural should be frustrate, if there were not some
farther thing wherein it might rest at the length contented, which
in the former it cannot do. For man doth not seem to rest satisfied,
either with fruition of that wherewith his life is preserved, or
with performance of such actions as advance him most deservedly
in estimation ; but doth further covet, yea oftentimes manifestly
pursue with great sedulity and earnestness, that which cannot
stand him in any stead for vital use ; that which exceedeth the
reach of sense ; yea somewhat above capacity of reason, some-
what divine and heavenly, which with hidden exultation it rather
surmiseth than conceiveth ; somewhat it seeketh, and what that
is directly it knoweth not, yet very intentive desire thereof doth
so incite it, that all other known delights and pleasures are laid
aside, they give place to the search of this but only suspected
desire. If the soul of man did serve only to give him being in
this life, then things appertaining unto this life would content him,
as we see they do other creatures ; which creatures enjoying what
they live by seek no further, but in this contentation do show a
kind of acknowledgement that there is no higher good which doth
any way belong unto them. With us it is otherwise. For although
the beauties, riches, honours, sciences, virtues, and perfections
of all men living, were in the present possession of one ; yet
somewhat beyond and above all this there would still be sought
and earnestly thirsted for. So that Nature even in this life doth
plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection than either or
these two that 'have been mentioned.

Sidney. It would be strange if, in such a period, there were not
many other examples of beautiful style and appealing
rhythm ; but they are mostly casual, and seldom long
upheld. It was reserved for the next century availing
itself at once of the rhythmical accomplishment of Hooker
and of the extended vocabulary of Lyly and the trans-
lators to produce the absolute masterpieces of the kind.
But it may be expected that something should be said
of Sidney, who has had very great praise from some,
and who has even been regarded as a rescuer of English
prose style from the polluting extravagances of Euphuism.
As a matter of fact, Sir Philip, an admirable master of
metre, came rather too soon to be a master of prose
rhythm ; and at times he indulged in fashions of writing
(I am told, directly derived from Spanish) which were
more fatal to a really beautiful cadence than Euphuism
itself. Here is a well-known example :

v FIRST MATURITY ASCHAM TO HOOKER 139

To my dear Lady and Sister, the Countess of Pembroke.

Here have you now, most dear, and most worthy to be most
dear, lady, this idle work of mine ; which, I fear, like the spider's
web, will be thought fitter to be swept away than wove to any other
purpose. For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among
the Greeks were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I
could well find in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness
this child which I am loth to father. But you | desired me | to do
it, | and your desire | to my heart | is an absolute | commandment.
| Now | it is done | only for you, | only to you ; | if you keep it |
to yourself, | or commend it | to such friends | who will weigh
errors | in the balance | of good will, | I hope, | for the father's
sake, | it will be pardoned, | perchance | made much of, | though
in itself | it have | deformities. | For indeed for severer eyes it is
not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled. Your dear self
can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper,
most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast
as they were done. In sum, a young head, not so well stayed as
I would it were, and shall be when God will, having many fancies
begotten in it, if it had not been in some way delivered, would have
grown a monster, and more sorry might I be that they came in than
that they gat out. But his chief safety shall be the walking abroad ;
and his chief protection the bearing the livery of your name, which,
if much good will do not deceive me, is worthy to be a sanctuary
for a greater offender. This say I because I know thy virtue so ;
and this say I because it may be for ever so, or, to say better,
because it will be for ever so.

Most people, I suppose, will admit without difficulty
that this is not quite a success. The poet's hand breaks

out sometimes. " Now it is done only for you, | only

to you," though dangerously choriambic in suggestion, is
pretty, and need not be excluded from prose, which is
more tolerant of repeated identical tetrasyllable feet than
of shorter ones. I do not hate parenthesis or epexegesis,
but " most dear, and most worthy to be most dear " seems
to me a rather vile phrase ; and as for the jingle-jangle
of the last sentence, it is worthy of Don Adriano de
Armado himself. Of course there are some good things
in the text of the Arcadia, but the sentences are, as a rule,
heavy and clumsy, ill-constructed in themselves and ill-
compacted into paragraphs. The Apology for Poetry is
much better ; but it is, as it ought to be, in a plain

140 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP, v

argumentative style, admitting of little ornament. There
are few things of the kind more curious than the com-
parison of Sidney and his friend Greville, who was
certainly not Sir Philip's superior as a poet, but who,
living later, was enabled to catch, even somewhat before-
hand, the amazing elevation and inspiration of prose style
and prose rhythm that set in with the seventeenth century. 1

1 The Collects and other portions of the Book of Common Prayer have
been naturally selected by Mr. Shelly (v. sup. p. 9 note), and perhaps by
others, as examples of that Latinising of English rhythm which I have (ibid. )
rather declined. I should myself be quite ready to leave the matter to an
impartial umpire on this very ground. Even where there is apparent corre-
spondence in collocation of syllables, it seems to me that, as in other cases
where I have pointed the same thing out, these obstinately group themselves
in different English y^?/. In fact, the "classical metre" phenomena in verse
reproduce themselves in prose, except that the liberty of the latter permits
the situation to be saved.

CHAPTER VI

THE AUTHORISED VERSION AND THE TRIUMPH OF
THE ORNATE STYLE

The coming of harvest The Authorised Version of the Bible The
sixtieth chapter of the book of Isaiah A.V., Septuagint, and
Vulgate scanned Discussion of each Earlier English versions
for comparison : Coverdale The " Bishops' " Remarks on
them Geneva and Douay A New Testament example, the
Charity passage of /. Cor. : atrocities of the Revisers The
older versions here Results of scrutiny Observation on use
of synonyms Individual writers Raleigh Greville Donne
The palmiest days Bacon (?) Burton Beauties and faults
Milton Disputes about his prose, and their causes Close
connection of Milton's style with oratory Some of its faults
Partial foot-analysis Taylor : the general high estimate of him
Examples Rhythmical characteristics Browne : Coleridge's
charge against him Special character of his charm, and special
treatment of it required The finale of Urn Burial Interim
observation on overture The close of the Garden of Cyrus
Short passages from Religio Medici From the Hydriotaphia
From the Garden of Cyrus The Letter to a Friend And
Christian Morals. Others perforce omitted.

THE processes and processions of the two harmonies The coming
march generally in parallel lines ; but these parallels are of
often, like the bars of the instrument of that name, not
longitudinally coincident and co-extensive. Just as the
period of rhythmical pupillage which has sometimes been
very unjustly dismissed as one of mere doggerel, and
which extended from Wyatt to Gascoigne, prepared the
way for the outburst of pure and finished poetry which
followed the Shepherd's Kalendar, so the livelier, longer,
more abundant and more various period of prose exercise

141

1 42 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

which we have surveyed in the last chapter led up, not
merely to the single, precocious, and to a certain extent
isolated, masterpiece of Hooker, but to an immense
development a very little later.

The Author- It was almost inevitable that this development should

disclose a certain parting of the ways. As soon as a
deliberately ornate style comes into existence, there will
be many who cannot reach it, and some, perhaps, who
would not if they could. Now rhythm is the chief and
the most difficult form or constituent of ornateness ;
and it must therefore be among the first to be abandoned,
failed in, or not aimed at. We shall have something,
nay much, to say of the " plain-stylists " of the earlier
seventeenth century, but we must first attack its chief
glories perhaps the principal documents (at least until
the nineteenth century) of our present quest. And let
us " begin with Jove," as was bidden of old.

The sixtieth One of the highest points l of English prose is probably

chapter of the rea ched in the Authorised Version of the sixtieth chapter

book of Isaiah, r

of Isaiah. So utterly magnificent is the rendering that
even those dolefullest of creatures the very Ziim and
Ochim and lim of the fauna of our literature the
Revisers of 1870-1885, hardly dared to touch it at all. 2
To compare it with the same passage in other languages
is a liberal education in despising and discarding the idle
predominance of " the subject." The subject is the same
in all, and the magnificence of the imagery can hardly be
obscured by any. Of the Hebrew I cannot unfortunately
speak, for at the time when I knew a very little Hebrew
I knew nothing about literary criticism ; and now, when I
know perhaps a little about literary criticism, I have
entirely lost my Hebrew. But I can read it with some

1 For the analysis of another, the " Love " passage of the Canticles, I may
refer to the book cited in Preface. In its quarter of a century of life it has
had the good fortune to please good wits, I believe, including even some who
dislike the division of words.

2 With their irremediable and essential folly of pottering and meticulous
blot-making (for it is "mendation" not "emendation"), they have, however,
pluralised "peoples," where the s is not an improvement, and substituted
"nations" for "the Gentiles," thereby, if not hamstringing, certainly not
enhancing, the beauty of the rhythm. The two later verses blazed vision
even into their blindness, and they left them alone.

vi THE AUTHORISED VERSION 143

critical competence in Greek and in Latin, in French and
in German ; and I can form some idea of what its
rhetorical value is in Italian and in Spanish. That any
one of the modern languages (even Luther's German) can
vie with ours I can hardly imagine any one, who can
appreciate both the sound and the meaning of English,
maintaining for a moment. With the Septuagint and
the Vulgate it is different, for the Greek of the one has
not quite lost the glory of the most glorious of all
languages, and has in places even acquired a certain
additional uncanny witchery from its eastern associations ;
while as for the Vulgate Latin " there is no mistake
about that" But we can meet and beat them both.
Let us take the overture and the crowning passage in the
three, also taking (though with all due ceremony of
apology) the liberty of dividing and quantifying all.

~-_~- ~ _ - ~ ~ & int . an d

Lord | is risen | upon thee. || For, behold, | the darkness | shall Vulgate
- ~ ~ - _ - ~ ~ ~^- scanned.

shall arise | upon thee, | and his glory | shall be seen | upon thee. ||
And the Gentiles | shall come | to thy light, | and kings | to the
brightness | of thy rising. |

The sun | shall be no more | thy light | by day ; | neither | for
brightness | shall the moon | give light unto thee : | but the Lord |
shall be to thee | an everlasting light, | and thy God | thy glory. ||
Thy sun | shall no more | go down ; | neither | shall thy moon |
withdraw herself: | for the Lord | shall be | thine everlasting light, |
and the days | of thy mourning | shall be ended. |

yap crov TO <ws, KCU

avrov 7rt (re | 6<J>OrjcrfTai. | KOI iropfva-ovrai \ /JacriAets | TO) <^co
o-ov, I Kal fdvrj ry Xa^TrporrjTi crov.

144 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.
Kai OVK ecrrcu | trot eri \ 6 r/Aios | tts <a)s | rj/JLtpas, | ovSe aVaToAr/ 1

OrcAryVI^S | <^WTtl (TOV | TTJV VVKTtt, I aAA' e'cTTat (TOt | KV/31OS | <(2s

Discussion of Here the Seventy undoubtedly cut the worst figure,
though they may have the best language : and it might
be only fair to give a passage or two from either of the
Wisdoms (of Solomon or of Sirach) to show what they
could do when they were more at home in matter.
They seem to have been dazzled by the imaginative
magnificence of the passage. The mere repetition of
(j)(ori^ov, though it loses a chance, need not be, and is
not, bad in itself; but it certainly is not assisted by the
necessary reoccurrence of <&J9, which the Latin also does
not escape, but which we luckily do. They have been far
too prodigal of short syllables ; and though, of course,
others may not agree with my footing or quantifying of
dvaTTa\Kev, no arrangement will get rid of the six con-
secutive shorts. 2 <TOTO<? and 71/0^09 is not a pretty

1 As to these and some other apparent false quantities, I am not afraid of
any real scholar mistaking me. The quantification had become partly, if not
largely, accentual, and elision is optional or absent.

2 Unless, which is not impossible, oi or tirl was " stressed up" for the time.
I have, however, not attempted here, as I have in the Latin, a partly accentual

THE AUTHORISED VERSION 145

assonance, and the rhymes of fyavrja-erai, and o^^o-erat are
even less appropriate. Nor, yet again, is the homceo-
teleuton of (fxori crov and Xa/LtTrpor^rt crov at all agreeable,
at least to my ears when they remember the close of the
Platonic Apology. Still, it is grand (especially the last two
verses), but it is very much grander in the Vulgate. The
substitution of Surge, illuminare for the double <&mbu is
a great gain, for you get the varied lights of the vowels
and the varied cadence of the feet. The dissyllabic
possessives tuum, tuo, tut, are a clear improvement on the
cases of a-v, especially when it comes after the nouns ; and
mere homoeoteleuton is avoided, except in the case of
sempiternam and tuam, which hardly counts. But the
greatest improvement is in the general rhythm, where
St. Jerome may have had the advantage in individual
genius, and must have had that of the old " Itala " before
him, as well as thorough familiarity with a dialect
certainly better in relation to classical Latin than that
of the Alexandrian Jews (though, as above observed, not
to be scoffed at) was to classical Greek.

Something, nay a good deal, of this improved rhythm
has passed into the Authorised Version, of course through
its predecessors * as well as directly ; but the further
advance is astounding. In the very opening we have the
benefit of that glorious vowel i which, in perfection
(though the Germans have something of it in their et),
belongs only to English. 2 Its clarion sound is thrice re-
peated in five words ("thy" has it slightly modified and
muffled in note) with indifferent consonants preceding and
following in each case, and contrasted in the strongest and
most euphonious manner possible with the long <?'s of "Gbry
of the L0rd," while the vigour of the contrast shades off

scansion, because the actual or conventional accents are there to serve.
And they will do no small service if called upon. But classical Greek was
more tolerant of accumulated shorts than English, witness the proceleusmatic
as a foot, and occasional consecutive tribrachs as combinations.

1 For these see above (pp. 123-126) and below (pp. 149-152), in the
latter case the actual passage.

2 The attempt to make it diphthongal simply betrays false pronunciation
at is beautiful, but it is not the same as *'.

146 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

into the duller resonances of " rz'sen upon fhee" I
have spoken of the bad effect of CT/COTO? and ryvo<j>os.
Tenebrae and caligo are an immense improvement on these,
but they cannot compare with the further gain of the
retention and amplification in "darkness" and "gross
darkness." In turn of phrase it is the same : a dozen
examples could be given, but one will suffice the
unimaginable betterment of " splendor /#nae il/minabit te "
(good as it is in itself) by " for brightness shall the moon
give light unto thee."

But it is in the total rhythm and harmonic ordonnance
that the game is most surely ours. That we borrowed
both fiddle and rosin to some extent has been admitted ;
but we can pay the debt, and keep our own increase, and
be rich beyond counting. The opening clause, " Arise,
shine ; for thy light is come," is a possible verse ; but it is
not an obtrusive one, and any suggestion of it being
verse at all is at once quenched by the cadence of the
second half. It is the same with the next, and
throughout ; that inevitable nisus towards metre which the
ancient critics had noticed being invariably counteracted,
neutralised, and turned into " the other harmony " by
succeeding phrases which achieve the prose suggestion
and negative the poetic. As for the second section
(vv. 19 and 20) I do not know how many thousand
times in my life (the number is not poetical) I have said
these verses over to myself with ever-fresh perception of
their inexhaustible sweetness and splendour. Nowhere,
perhaps, 1 is the enormous advantage which absence of
inflection and its identical terminations confers better
illustrated. We have escaped the continued -ov and -erat

long a) utilised; hardly one except i repeated, for "shall" is too much in
\

thesis to equal " land," and the foot arrangement unsurpassable. The mere
contrast even of the trochaically ending first half, and the spondaic or double
monosyllabic second, is a miracle.

vi THE A UTHORISED VERSION 147

of the Greek, the wearisome am's and urn's of the Latin.
We are free to devote ourselves to that co-ordination of
varied rhythm and vowel-music which belongs to prose.
The fluctuation of the phrase -movement, the slight
touches of alliteration here and there, the soft trochaic
endings not too frequently sweetening the bolder iambs
or monosyllables, are ambrosial ; and the final phrase of
an anapaest and two third paeons gives a dying close l
that no verse can outgo that very little verse can equal.

The actual scansion requires a few more remarks.
That of the Greek and that of the Latin are both mere
sporting attempts, and subject to what each scholar
troweth. I would only interject a caution that Aristo-
telian remarks or Quintilianist rules must be largely
" salted " both for the Seventy and for St. Jerome. Each
version must have been subject to accentual influences, to
which in the former case the actual accents are very puzzling
guides, while in the latter we have no guides at all.

But on the approximate correctness of the English,
while " open to offers " of improvement, I must on the
whole set up my rest. It certainly brings out the beauty
of the passage pretty exactly, as it presents itself to my
ear ; and what is more, it admits of some not too rash
inspection of the means by which these results are
obtained. It will be observed that the total rhythm is
distinctly iambic, as if the artist 2 (whether consciously or
unconsciously matters not one straw) had been driven by
the double keynote of sense and sound in the first word
to " rising " rhythm. But he attains the necessary prose
variety by taking what we may call " the greater iambic
compass" iamb itself; anapaest ( = iamb with a pre-
liminary short) ; amphibrach (iamb with a short breath of
suffix) ; and lastly, paeon, where, in all but the first form of

1 If they had followed the a.va.ir\i]dj]aovrai of the Greek (one of its best
words by the way, as indeed the whole verse is one of its best verses) or the
foniplebuntur of the Latin, actum esset. " Fulfilled " is a good word, but it
would be fatal here. "Completed" is not a bad one, but it would be an
outrage. " Finished " would not break the rhythm, but it would very much
; mpoverish the sound. " Ended " is the " lonely word " that would do to end
with, and they got it, no matter (v. inf.) whence.

2 A composite one ; but, again, no matter for that.

148 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

paeon, which he never uses, the effect of the foot is iambic
expanded in one way or another. 1 And thus you find
that, throughout the extract, the vast majority of the feet
used are iamboid that is to say, they begin with a short
syllable and proceed to a long one. But if this were
universal it would contravene the great law of prose
rhythm, which is Variety ; and so he provides a certain
small number of trochees to check the monotony, and
some of those precious monosyllabic feet which give
English an actual advantage, both in verse and prose, over
Latin. And yet further, it may and should be observed
that the arrangement and companionship of feet is not
only different from that of verse, but impossible in it.
Take for instance the frequent association of anapaest and
amphibrach. Now, as perhaps a few of the few probable
readers of this book may remember, I am not myse*lf a
great partisan of the amphibrach in the scansion of English
verse ; while others (of no doubt equally good or better
judgment) allow and welcome it. Either side may be
right. But it is incontestable that you must adopt one
scansion or another ; you cannot, in verse, combine both.

The black \ bands | came oiver

The Alps : and | their snow

may be amphibrachic or anapaestic ; but if you try to
combine both measures, as in

1 The symbols will exhibit the correspondence more clearly oculis
fidelibus: Iamb, ^ . Anapaest, w |w . Amphibrach, ^ |w. Fourth

paeon, ^^|w ; while second poeon, w ww , is iamb and two shorts, and
third, C|yy |w, iamb with short on each side.

2 Some would, of course, prefer even bacchic or antibacchic rhythm

w or w . But to my ear these feet in English verse always, and in

prose generally, slip into the others.

vi THE A UTHORISED VERSION 149

But, it may be said, this is merely academic ; you Earlier English
ought to compare, if you compare at all, with the compTi.
previous English versions. With all my heart. It is not Coverdaie.
of much use here to take Wyclif, 1 and Tyndale did not
translate Isaiah. Coverdale's first version, and the
" Bishops'," which represents an improvement on the
" Great " (itself to a large extent Coverdale's revised), and
which was the ostensible " basis " of the Authorised
Version, will suffice, with well-deserved glances right and
left at Geneva and Douay.

The first glance at Coverdaie 2 will show that the mira-
culous beauty of the 1 6 1 1 version owes but little to him :

And therefore get thee up betimes, for thy light cometh, and the
glory of the Lord shall rise up upon thee. For lo ! while the dark-
ness and clouds covereth the earth and the people, the Lord shall
shew thee light, and his glory shall be seen in thee. The Gentiles
shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness that springeth
forth upon thee. . . . Thy sun shall never go down, and thy moon
shall never be taken away ; but the Lord himself shall be thy ever-
lasting light, and thy God shall be thy glory. The sun shall never
be thy daylight, and the light of the moon shall never shine unto
thee ; for the Lord himself shall be thine everlasting light, and thy
sorrowful days shall be rewarded thee.

The " Bishops'," more than thirty years afterwards, and The
with more than one or two versions between to help, does
not improve much upon this, except at the very close :

Get thee up betimes and be bright, O Jerusalem ; for thy light
cometh, and the glory of the Lord is risen up upon thee. For lo !
while the darkness and cloud covereth the earth and the people, the
Lord shall shew thee light, and his glory shall be seen in thee.
The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness
that springeth forth upon thee. . . . The sun shall never be thy
daylight, and the light of the moon shall never shine upon thee ;
but the Lord himself shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God
shall be thy glory. Thy sun shall never go down, and thy moon
shall not be hid : for the Lord himself shall be thine everlasting
light, and thy sorrowful days shall be ended.

1 The Wyclifite versions were unprinted ; and though occasional re-
semblances (on which some lay stress) occur in the Authorised Version, they
are probably due either directly to the Vulgate, or to Rheims-Douay.

2 Ed. Bagster (London, 1847). I may perhaps be allowed to remark that
any apparent belittlement of versions (except the Revised) other than the
Authorised is merely "comparative" and not at all "rascally."

ISO A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

It will be observed there is really not much difference
between these, and that the version, which was published
just when poor " Miles quondam Exon." (as he used regret-
fully to sign himself in his last decade) was dead or dying,
owes a very great deal to that which he himself (with
some slight help from Tyndale no doubt, but very im-
probably in this place) had brought out thirty-three years
before. It is a curious question whether the homelinesses
and wants of polish in both, especially in the first, would
have struck us much if we had not had the polished
perfection of the Authorised Version. But the actual
comparison is most curious. The Old Guard of " Every-
thing depends upon the meaning " had better get them
up betimes, and have their weapons ready, if they want to
prove that there is any difference in meaning here. But
" oh ! the difference to us " of the expression ! Neither
Coverdale nor his half-colleagues, half-supplanters, have
thought of that simplest of deletions, the reform of the
Remarks on repeated up-upQt\. Compare again the rhythmical insig-
nificance of " the darkness and cloud[s] covereth the earth
and the people " with the splendour achieved by the very
simple rhetorical sleights of parallelism and repetition in
" darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people."
Value, if you can do it, the enormous advantage of " And
the Gentiles " as well as " of thy rising " as contrasted with
" that springeth forth on thee." Weigh the gain of " no
more " and of the excision of those otiose " nevers," and
the burnishing up of the parallels in the second part of the
extract, and the artistry of the omission of " shall be thy
glory," and the substitution of " of thy mourning " for " thy
sorrowful " rhythmically. And lastly, note how, though
the force of the matter seems to have put at once in

Coverdale's hand the magnificent phrase " For the Lord
himself 1 | shall be | thine everlasting light," with the

1 It may well be said that the omission of "himself" later was something
of a loss though, I think, cause may be shown for it. And the " Bishops,"
though I do not mean to insinuate that they were "Bishops of wood,"
deserve " croziers of gold " for having found out " ended," though they
could not lead up to it properly.

vi THE AUTHORISED VERSION 151

power of the great dochmiac shooting it up, and the swell
of the paeon l slowing its downward glide though the
" Bishops " actually hit (like Geneva and Douay) upon
"ended," neither Coverdale nor his banded brethren
could finish the phrase accordingly, and left it to King
James's men to put the apple of gold in a picture of
more than silver.

But Geneva and Douay have they no part in the Geneva and
accomplishment ? Let us see.

Undoubtedly they have. Both had preceded the
Authorised Version in the important substitution of
" Arise " for " Get thee up." But neither had thought of
" shine," which is almost more important, phonetically
and rhythmically ; Geneva having " be bright " and
Douay " be illuminated," which latter is a rather disastrous
result of following the " authentical " Vulgate. Geneva
has " for thy light is come," but Douay spoils " for " into
" because." " The glory of our Lord," which the one set
of refugees gave, is not so good as " the glory of the
Lord," which the other kept. The great " light " which
the ultra-Protestants supplied to King James's men is the
opposition or amplification of "darkness" and "gross
darkness " with the distribution over " earth " and
" people." The ultra- (or infra-) Catholics kept this
distribution, but their servile ascription to the Vulgate
obliged them to " mist " (for caligo\ which is quite
definitely inferior to " gross darkness " for " stylistic " and
rhythmical purposes. Both have " brightness of thy
rising " instead of the clumsier earlier versions ; but
Geneva does not improve it by " rising up " in the " sun
and moon " passage. Both fail to reach the rhythmical per-
fection attained by the Authorised Version, Geneva having
" the brightness of the moon shine upon thee " and " day-
light in thee." Douay has the wrong word in " sorrow,"
though the right in "ended," while the Genevans had

1 Anti-word-splitters can have another dochmiac if they like. It will be
good, but not, I think, so good. We want a pause on the light-scattering

"last-" after the rush up of "thine ever-," or if anybody prefers a long
" thine," the two anapaests of " shall be thine " and " everlast-."

152 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

already " found the chrysolite " in " the days of thy
mourning shall be ended." It is therefore quite fair to
say that the Authorised has very numerous and very
particular indebtednesses to these, in one case very
questionable friends, in the other unquestioned enemies.
But it is also fair to add that, if it borrowed good things
wherever it found them, it bettered them, made them
from promising parts into a perfect whole, and so also
made them its own.

A New Testa- Let us, for another example, take what is perhaps the
finest passage, rhythmically, of the New Testament, as
" Arise, shine " is not far from being the finest of the Old. 1
The mess which those unfortunate Revisers made of this

passage of
i Cor. xiii. :
atrocities of

the Revisers, is notorious. Being utterly ignorant of English literature
they altered " glass " to " mirror," because, I suppose,
they were clever enough to know that " glass " was 'not
used for mirrors in the Apostle's days, and not clever
enough to have heard of Gascoigne's " Steel Glass " in
the days of the " Authorised " translators themselves. By
recurring to " love," instead of " charity " 2 (an error, even
from the strictest " crib " point of view, for it leaves the
English reader uncertain whether ayaTrr) or epws is meant),
they have at one blow cut the whole rhythm of the
passage to pieces, and substituted ugly jolting thuds for
undulating spring-work. Because they thought a cymbal
did not " tinkle " but did " clang," they spoilt the sound of
a whole phrase, and very doubtfully improved its sense, by
altering to " clanging " (they had not even the sense to
try " clashing," and I wonder why they did not use
" bang "). Because of the absurd objection to synonyms
which has been, and will be, pilloried, they spoilt the
euphony by making both the " prophecies " and the
" knowledge " be " done away." They had not even the
courage to be literal, where it would have been again
in place, by rendering " through a mirror," and they

1 I should like to have tried some horn Job ; but space cries " No ! "

2 The excuse commonly made for them that the word " charity " has
been "degraded" is ridiculous. The exchange recognises, and therefore
confirms, the " degradation." For " loving-kindness " there might have been
a faint excuse ; for " love," none.

vi THE AUTHORISED VERSION 153

deliberately underwent the curse of Mr. Pendennis's
schoolmaster by rendering Be " and " instead of " but " in
the final clause.

The translators of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, The older
and seventeenth centuries being all good Englishmen,
and faithful speakers of English, avoided most of these
horrors though Tyndale, the " Great " Bible, the
" Bishops'," and, of course, Geneva, probably out of mere
Protestant " cussedness," spoilt the passage by " love."
It was all the more to the credit of 161 1, that, following
the Vulgate, Wyclif, and Rheims, and adopting a term
which had a perfectly well recognised ecclesiastical
meaning, they went back to " charity," and so got a
matchless word, the very sound -equal of the Greek
ayaTrrj, and capable of exercising musical dominance
through the whole. The opening verse is curiously close
throughout, with "If" in Wyclif and Rheims (the Vulgate
having st) for " Though." Every older version I have com-
pared has "tinkling." But the Authorised Version exhibits
afresh the solace of its excellent boldness by substituting
" to be burned " for " so that I be burned," which in
various forms all the others have, and which, though
really the same in meaning, is more literal from the
Greek. The gain in expression will strike every one, save
a Reviser who has not yet gone to his own place. The
comparison of the versions of ev alvijfiari, which the
Vulgate keeps unchanged (in enigmate\ is most striking.
No English translator seems to have dared " in an
enigma," and the Revisers have only dared " in a riddle " in
the margin, though " through a mirror as in riddles " would
have been better than their actual blunder. They kept
the " darkly," though they threw away the " glass," and
though " darkly " is certainly not a literal version of the
Greek. Wyclif had, curiously enough, written " by a
mirror in darkness." But Tyndale has " in a glass, even
in a dark speaking " ; the " Great," ditto ; Geneva,
practically the same, with " and " for " even " ; and the
" Bishops' " repeats Tyndale and the " Great " ; while
Rheims itself, for once forsaking the Vulgate, gives " by

154 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

a glass in a dark sort" I fancy this was one of the
instances when our men said to themselves, Fas ab hoste,
and triumphantly bettered their borrowing by the adverb.
" In a glass darkly " has been one of the literary catch-
words of the English language ever since, and I am
afraid that Dante would have branded it on the Revisers'
souls with very unpleasant additions, circumstances, and
location, though we may " charitably," if not " lovingly,"
hope that this last would have been recorded in the second
Cantica, not the first.

Results of But, because of these admitted borrowings, is it there-
scrutiny. f ore f a j r J.Q di sm iss the Authorised Version itself as a
mere mosaic, or to revive, to its discredit, the endless
chatter about " plagiarism " that is so familiar in the
mouths of the " tydifs, tercelets, and oules " of criticism ?
Most certainly not ; and indeed the very use of the word
" mosaic " gives the user helplessly into the hand of
his enemies, and the Book's defenders. Give any but a
real artist a handful of enamel cubes, and see if he can
make a picture out of them ! But one can carry the war
farther, and with greater devastation, than this.

In the first place, there are, after all, only a certain
number of English equivalents in phrase for a given
number of Hebrew, Greek, or Latin words ; and it is the
selection of these possibilities which is the first thing,
the sense that a precursor has selected aright being only
inferior, if inferior at all, to his own genius in selection.

But in the second and far more important place, it
is the combination of these selections, the additions made
to them, and the result achieved, which must decide the
matter. I have before suggested the idea of printing
passages in different-coloured inks, and the process would
here indicate the borrowings, as they are called. It
would then be seen at a glance, as it can now be seen by
moderately careful reading, that the Translators have
added not a little, as in the wonderful opening " Arise,
shine " onwards ; and that the combination of their actual
followings is more wonderful still. The successive earlier
versions are no doubt almost invariably improvements

vi THE AUTHORISED VERSION 155

upon each other in combined rhythm. The advances
made by the Geneva people over their forerunners are
great ; those by Douay-Rheims on Geneva not small,
though counterbalanced by some fallings back ; but the
advance of the Authorised Version, as a whole, almost
distances these two last.

Of the numerous means by which these miraculous Observation
results are attained it would be out of place to speak here
at any great length. But there is one which, for reasons,
cannot be passed over ; it is the free employment of
synonyms for the same original word in different places.
I remember my own almost incredulous surprise when I
first saw fault found with this practice, by one of the
good people who look upon an English Bible as merely
a " crib " for ignorant laity and insufficiently educated
clergy. But I can add another memory before mentioned
the surprise of a foreign scholar (who not only knew
English literature well, but spoke and wrote the language
as I wish I could speak or write French or German)
when I myself claimed, as a special virtue of our tongue,
its abundance of not always exactly synonymous
synonyms. He seemed to think that " one thought, one
word " was the counsel of perfection in language ; while
my ideal was as many slightly varied thoughts as possible
for a word, and as many distinctly varied words as
possible for a thought. " Philologotheosophically " (as
Sir Thomas Urquhart might say) there is no doubt much
to be said on both sides, though I hold to my opinion.
But, even thus, from our present point of view the advan-
tage of synonyms and the wisdom of employing them
must surely be altogether beyond question. 1 Unless you
want absolute epanorthosis or repetition, which, though
occasionally effective, is very rarely desirable, it will
almost always happen that the English companions of
the same Hebrew or Greek word in one place will require
a different sound in the English substitute from that
which they demand or suffer in another. I am sure it is
not rash to say that a very large part of the excellence

1 The invaluable Mason (v. App. II.) saw it already.

156 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of the Authorised Version in style and rhythm is due to
the use of synonyms or quasi-synonyms ; and I think
one would be equally safe in saying that, with a rigid
rendering of " same word by same word," rhythmical
perfection is simply impossible.

The above remarks were written, almost to a letter, in
the shape in which it is hoped that they will appear, before
the newspaper correspondences and discussions 1 which
the anniversary of the Authorised Version called forth,
and therefore still more before the publication of any new
books on the subject. I had already, twenty years
earlier, 2 made some strictures, as severe as I could then
decently make them, on the shortcomings of the Re-
vised Version, and had more recently, still without any
view to the anniversary, but with much to the plan of
this book, made a fresh and independent study of* the
sources and parallels discussed above. I found in the
newspaper defenders of the Version, of course, much
support for my own views, and, in particular, I was
very glad to find a translator of proved quality like
Bishop Welldon taking exactly the same view of the
synonym-question which I had already put in the para-
graph above. But I found, on the other side, whether
among those who defended the Revised Version itself, or
those who wanted still further revision, 3 hardly anything

1 I myself wrote on the subject in the Glasgow Herald ; but most of the
text above was already written when the editor asked me for the article.
There is perhaps one point, a little outside our special subject, on which I
should add a note to this paragraph. It is sometimes said, "This is all very
well ; but how about the advance in scholarship, and the consequent
deficiency of the Authorised Version in accuracy?" I could ask, whether
any translation is ever "accurate"? whether true scholarship does not
always require recourse to the original ? But this is perhaps too wide. I
shall confine myself to saying that no one has ever shown me a passage
where any correction, in text or in translation, affects an important question
of faith. Even the celebrated apiraynbv business (Philipp. ii. 6) does not

I touch that. Further, it is the duty of a properly educated clergy to explain
. such matters. Nor need any one object to as much addition or correction in
marginal or foot-notes as may be thought necessary.

2 In a History of Elizabethan Literature. The first edition of this (1887)
appeared only two years after the completion of the Revisers' work.

3 These have since presented themselves in a company which, to borrow
from Captain Macheath, " I own surprised me." I shall only express a faint
hope that this book may help to show the impossibility of " patching " prose

vi THE AUTHORISED VERSION 157

that required answer. I think it not unfair to say that
they were all either well-known fanatics of the new-
fangled ; or persons whose known grudge against, or
unfaithfulness to, the Church of England naturally
exhaled in carpings at this her greatest work, and the
greatest literary work (except the Latin hymns) of any
Church in the world ; or merely peddling pedants ; or a
kind of bastard representatives of the old ultra-Protestant
view that the Bible is in itself, as a written or printed
book, a kind of automatic sacrament, and had therefore
better be presented in the most literal fashion possible ;
or lastly, and strange to say, in some cases confessedly,
men deaf to the difference of the harmonic values.
That the noblest stuff is worthy of the noblest fashion
seems to have occurred to few ; that it is impossible to
have a nobler fashion than this, hardly to any ; that the
demand for a new Bible every century, to suit the
supposed " needs of the people," is a daring indictment
against the education of that people, scarcely to one. It
is true that the specious and half-informed ignorance
which has now, for nearly half a century, been diffused
among the lower classes by board-schools, and, through
the contamination of grammar and public schools, among
the middle and upper, probably has had this effect. But
to meet it by freshly journalised versions from generation
to generation is to meet dropsy by giving drink.

But foin de ces miseres-la ! So long as a single copy
of the version of 1 6 1 1 survives, so long will there be
accessible the best words of the best time of English, in
the best order, on the best subjects, so long will the
fount be open from which a dozen generations of great
English writers, in the most varying times and fashions,
of the most diverse temperaments libertines and virtuous
persons, freethinkers and devout, poets and prosemen,
laymen and divines have drawn inspiration and pattern ;
by which three centuries of readers and hearers have had

such as the Authorised Version. The proposal, indeed, reminds me of
nothing so much as of Bentley's or Pemberton's proposals for an improved
Milton. But the next sentence was not meant to apply to this set of persons.

1 58 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

kept before them the prowess and the powers of the
English tongue. 1

individual It must, however, have struck people who, with some

literary knowledge, have looked over the list of the
English Forty-Seven, 2 that the excellence of their work is
certainly not due to the presence among them of many,
or even of any, very distinguished men of letters as such.
Bishop Lancelot Andrewes has indeed a bright and
reverend name, but it is hardly due to any great accom-
plishment of style on his part. And there is no other on
the list (not even " Mr. Savile," otherwise Sir Henry)
who even approaches him in this respect. The literary
tact shown must have been due to an extraordinary
/ diffusion of it among the men of the time. Per contra,
this diffusion must have concentrated and essentialised
itself in others ; and we know that, as a matter of fact, it
did. Although the strict " Elizabethan " period was past,
and although the premature death of Spenser, and of
almost all of the first great group of dramatists, had
removed some masters who might well have lived into
Caroline days, Shakespeare (himself no long-lived man)
had ten years to live when the Version was begun, and
five when it appeared ; Bacon (why has no one contended
that Andrewes and the rest were merely " Rosicrucian
masks " for him ?) was in his glory ; and though " Eliza-
bethan " poetry was to show hardly the least falling-off
during the actual reign of James, and even during the
less unhappy part of his successor's, Elizabethan prose
was taking vast and wonderful developments. Raleigh,

1 A word or two should perhaps be given to a demurrer, sometimes raised
even by persons of worship. " You grumble at the Revised Version : do you
know that similar grumbles were, at the time, made on the Authorised ? "
Yes ; I know it very well, and have always known it. It would be almost
enough to answer, "What then ? you cannot clear B by saying that the same
accusation was formerly brought against A." But there is much more to be
said. The time was a marvellous period of creation ; it was not such a
marvellous period of criticism. And the sole real question is, "Can we
prove our charges ? " I have given some specimens of proof above : I could
add hundreds.

2 A parallel with the Japanese heroes of the same number, but of another
story, would have been a good addition to Mr. Verdant Green's famous
examination paper.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 159

Greville, Donne had been merely or mostly poets earlier ;
they now began to write prose almost more beautiful than
their verse ; while, during the very period of gestation of
the Version, two of the Three Strong Ones of purely
seventeenth-century prose, Browne (1606) and Milton
(1608), were born, and Taylor (1613) was to be but two
years belated.

In fragments, if hardly in long passages, of the earlier Raleigh,
trio the summits are already reached ; nay, the style
floats at condor-height " beyond the arrows, shouts, and
views of men " above, as it would seem, any point that
can be reached by mere climbing and manoeuvring. The
altitude of such phrasing as that of the three following
passages, well known as it ought to be in all cases, is
hardly to be reached by any " scansion." Yet by scansion
we may, as it were, trigonometrise it estimate what we
cannot reach by touch.

It is well worth notice how here there is actually the
strong and almost meticulously arranged balance of
Euphuistic antithesis in clause ; but how the Euphuistic
sing-song and snip-snap is entirely drowned in the marvel-
lous rhythmical flow of the passage, which never trenches
upon verse (even the consecutive anapaests do not, to my
ear, produce anything like a metrical effect) ; how the
abundant monosyllabic feet arrest and solemnise the
cadence, while the anapaests themselves, and the not rare

1 Jactt, short in classical Latin, is long in mediaeval, and for English
purposes.

160 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

paeons, prevent any dragging or mumbling. There may
also be found in it that progression of feet in length or
retrogression in shortness, and that combination of different
trisyllables amphibrach, bacchic (or antibacchic), and
anapaest which I have elsewhere noticed. 1

Here is another and much longer passage, somewhat
less of a prose anthem, more continuous, and, as it were,
pedestrian (though the feet be rather of angels than of
men), but almost equally beautiful, and showing, if not
a higher flight, at any rate even greater strength and
holding power in the wing :

to the perfection | of our under [standing.

l As one cannot be too cautious in fending off carps, let it be observed
that the question whether Raleigh had "affable familiar ghosts" to help him
in the History matters here not one straw. If it is not Raleigh's it is some-
body else's, and that is enough. " Words, not the man, we sing," or rather
measure.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 161

Here, it will be observed, rhythm opens itself out
more, affects larger sweeps, and for that purpose extends,
proportionately, the compass of its feet. There are many
paeons, and I think, beyond all question, some dochmiacs,
where I have marked them. This great foot often has
the quivering straightness and onset of a lance in rest
at the charge. Note a good " procession " here, " the
strong, | flourishing, | and beautiful " (2, 3, 4).

Now try Greville : GreviUe.

This, it will be observed, is more like Hooker than the
Raleigh passages are ; indeed, Lord Brooke is of an older

1 In these two words the Grevillean that is to say, ultra-Elizabethan
"obscurity" may be thought to come in. But there really is no difficulty.
" Easy to be unfortunate "=" easy [not distressed] in your evil fortune" (cf-
the old jingle, "in your trouble to be troubled," etc.); while "her" is an
oblique reference to Fortuna Maligna herself, personified from ' ' unfortunate. "

1 62 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

type even than Raleigh, and a much older than Donne.
At the same time it anticipates Browne in a certain
tendency, not merely to quote Latin, but to give Latinised
x--^or archaised colourings and mouldings to words. It is,
however, in its leisurely solemnity, extremely beautiful ;
and the rise of the whole, with the final sweep (as of a
wave breaking softly on the shore it has reached) of " a
calmed and calming metis adepta" is hard to surpass or
parallel. There is no very great abundance of bulky feet,
and hardly any rapidity. 1

Donne. And now for Donne ; in a passage than which I hardly

know anything more exquisitely rhythmed in the whole
range of English from ^Elfric to Pater :

Here there could be no change without disaster, except
in the possible substitution of some other word for the

1 The beauty of the amphibrachic, i.e. trochaic, ending should also be
noticed.

2 The keeping out of metrical effect here is all the more remarkable inasmuch
as there are frequent aggregations of similar feet. The reader will perhaps

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 163

thrice-repeated " dominion[s]," which to our ears (though
apparently neither to French nor to English ones of the
seventeenth century) make a disagreeable jingle without
emphasis to excuse it. " Now," as repeated, is in a very
different position, and makes one of the appeals of the
piece. The Shakespearian magnificence of the diction, such
as the throng of kindred but never tautological phrase in
" wintered and frozen," etc., and the absolute perfection
of rhythmical never metrical movement, could not be
better wedded. It has, I have said, never been surpassed.
I sometimes doubt whether it has ever been equalled.

These three passages, with that from Hooker given The palmiest
towards the close of the last chapter, are something more ays '
than foretastes of the famous " organ - tone " which
dominates the more elaborate prose of the period 1600-
1 660 ; which was represented, for a good many years
after the later date, by Milton, Browne, and Glanvill ;
and the last echo of which, though the concert of it had
long ceased, died off, just after the Stuart dynasty itself
had come to an end, with Thomas Burnet in 1715. To
multiply examples of it is exceedingly tempting, while to
one who has any knowledge of the subject and any love
of it, to cut them down is both painful and difficult. It
is, as usual, inevitable that the actual selection should
seem too abundant to some readers, and too scanty to
others ; but, as always, il faut prendre un parti.

Very different opinions have been held as to the style Bacon (?).
of Bacon. Nobody disputes the opulence of his thought,
or, in many passages at least, the close-packed pregnancy
of his meaning. But it may not unreasonably be made a
question whether this very abundance of matter to be
stowed has not to some extent affected the fashion of the
stowage, and even the trim outline of the vessel. I did

note the skill with which corresponding words are varied in value " shadows "
and " penuries " and the members of the " throng " above referred to. The
double iambs can be disjoined if any one likes, and the molossi " If some
king," " He can bring " made cretics.

164 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

not wholly agree with my friend the late Professor Minto's
estimate of " large-browed Verulam's " style, but I think
he was perfectly right in perceiving a good deal of John
Lyly in it. Now we saw that Lyly, for all his deliberate
effort at ornateness, frequently sacrificed continuous and
fluid rhythm to spurts and jets of suddenly recollected or
laboriously prepared conceit, and, above all, paid too much
attention to mere antithesis. Bacon is not led astray by
fancy similes, but he is by more solid erudition, which he
must needs impart by strings of concatenated variations on
the same thought, and, above all, by the effort to pack two
or more meanings into one word. The famous essay on
" Studies " is like a mass of compressed meat or vegetables,
sliced out into corresponding pieces of balanced clause. It
does not flow like water from a spring : it tumbles out
like shreds and scraps out of a bag. If you boiled ft up
and watered it out with a proper menstruum of auxiliary
and illustrative phrase, it might be quite an agreeable
thing : as it is, the prodesse has got a great deal the
better of the delectare. In the equally famous " Letter to
Lord Burleigh" you get blocks of systematised opposites
" frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities " ;
" blind experiments, auricular traditions, and impostures " ;
" industrious observations, conclusions, and profitable
inventions and discoveries " which remind one of Lord
Berners and his Preface, and are even more hindering
pebbles in the just flow of the discourse. Of course,
every now and then (it could not be otherwise with such
a writer at such a time) a great phrase may shoot itself
up and open itself out in the empyrean of words, like a
rocket shedding stars in a dark night. But there are not
very many of these, and they are hardly of the quality of
those that the reader has seen in the last few pages.
Even Minto himself allowed that Bacon "does. not seem
to have had Hooker's ear for the music of long periods."

On the whole, then, I should further agree with my
friend of yore that Bacon really figures in the tree of the
plain style, not in that of the ornate ; and we may perhaps
return to him a little when dealing with his friends and,

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 165

in a way, pupils, Jonson and Hobbes. Meanwhile, before
coming to the First Three, let us turn to another who is
something of a hybrid, if not even of a puzzle, the author
of the Anatomy of Melancholy.

All who have read Burton (and how are they to be Burton,
half commiserated and half envied who have not !) will be
ready to admit perhaps even to object that large tracts
of the Anatomy can hardly be said to have any continuous
rhythm at all. The peculiar breathless fashion in which
the author heaps quotation upon original writing, and
dovetails translation into quotation, and piles up lists of
semi-synonyms on casually occurring words and the like,
may seem to admit no such thing. There is some truth
in this, especially at first sight. Yet it may be counter-
objected that separate clauses of these paragraph- (they
can hardly be called sentence-) heaps are frequently, if
not usually, harmonious enough. And when he chooses
(which is far more often than desultory readers may
think) no man is a better master, if not of the most
ambitious or floriated, still of a very comely and satisfying
sentence-architecture. It will not be easy to find, earlier,
a better piece of smooth and spirited narrative, seasoned
with ironic touches, and arranged so as to read almost
as though it were told by word of mouth, than the
apologue of the scholar's good luck in " Moronia pia> or
Moronia felix, I know not whether."

But, to your farther content, I'll tell you a tale. In Moronia pia,
or Moronia felix, I know not whether, nor how long since, nor in
what cathedral church, a fat prebend fell void. The carcase scarce
cold, many suitors were up in an instant. The first had rich friends,
a good purse ; and he was resolved to outbid any man before he
would lose it ; every man supposed he should carry it. The second
was my Lord Bishop's chaplain (in whose gift it was) ; and he thought
it his due to have it. The third was nobly born ; and he meant to
get it by his great parents, patrons, and allies. The fourth stood
upon his worth ; he had newly found out strange mysteries in
chemistry, and other rare inventions, which he would detect to the
public good. The fifth was a painful preacher ; and he was com-
mended by the whole parish where he dwelt ; he had all their hands
to his certificate. The sixth was the prebendary's son lately
deceased ; his father died in debt (for it, as they say), left a wife and
many poor children. The seventh stood upon fair promises, which

1 66 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP-

to him and his noble friends had been formerly made for the next
place in his lordship's gift. The eighth pretended great losses, and
what he had suffered for the church, what pains he had taken at
home and abroad ; and besides he brought noble men's letters. The
ninth had married a kinswoman, and he sent his wife to sue for him.
The tenth was a foreign doctor, a late convert, and wanted means.
The eleventh would exchange for another ; he did not like the former's
site, could not agree with his neighbours and fellows upon any terms ;
he would be gone. The twelfth and last was a suitor in conceit, a
right honest, civil, sober man, an excellent scholar, and such a one as
lived private in the university ; but he had neither means nor money
to compass it ; besides he hated all such courses ; he could not
speak for himself, neither had he any friends to solicit his cause, and
therefore made no suit, could not expect, neither did he hope for, or
look after it. The good bishop, amongst a jury of competitors, thus
perplexed, and not yet resolved what to do, or on whom to bestow
it, at the last, of his own accord, mere motion, and bountiful nature,
gave it freely to the university student, altogether unknown to him
but by fame ; and, to be brief, the academical scholar had the
prebend sent him for a present. The news was no sooner published
abroad, but all good students rejoiced, and were much cheered up
with it, though some would not believe it ; others, as men amazed,
said it was a miracle ; but one amongst the rest thanked God for it,
and said, " Nunc juvat tandem studiosum esse, et Deo integro corde
servtre." You have heard my tale ; but, alas ! it is but a tale, a
mere fiction ; 'twas never so, never like to be ; and so let it rest.

Beauties and Nor is he destitute of the subtler graces. But, in
giving an example of them, we may also give one of a
fault which undoubtedly does beset the greater writers of
the time ; which is flagrant in Milton and Clarendon ;
and which, perhaps more than anything else, brought
about the almost organised revolt of Plainness at the
Restoration. This fault is not exactly what it has been
called, even by so great a critic as Coleridge, even by so
accurate a writer as Minto, a looseness in " grammar " or
in " syntax." Strictly speaking, English has reduced its
grammar to the lowest terms, and its syntax is largely,
if not wholly, " according to the meaning." It is a neglect
of the higher taxis or arrangement of sentence and para-
graph, especially in the direction of continuing sentences
where they ought to leave off. Take the example
referred to :

I may not deny but that there is some profitable meditation, con-
templation, and kind of solitariness, to be embraced, which the

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 167

fathers so highly commended Hierom, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Austin,
in whole tracts, which Petrarch, Erasmus, Stella, and others, so
much magnify in their books a paradise, an heaven on earth, if it
be used aright, good for the body, and better for the soul ; as many
of those old monks used it, to divine contemplations ; as Simulus a
courtier in Adrian's time, Diocletian the emperor, retired themselves,
etc., in that sense, Vatia solus scit viverej Vatia lives alone ; which
the Romans were wont to say, when they commended a country life ;
or to the bettering of their knowledge, as Democritus, Cleanthes, and
those excellent philosophers, have ever done, to sequester themselves
from the tumultuous world ; or, as in Pliny's villa Laurentana, Tully's
Tusculan, Jovius' study, that they might better -vacare studiis et Deo,
serve God and follow their studies. Methinks, therefore, our too
zealous innovators were not so well advised in that general subversion
of abbeys and religious houses, promiscuously to fling down all.
They might have taken away those gross abuses crept in amongst
them, rectified such inconveniencies, and not so far to have raved and
raged against those fair buildings, and everlasting monuments of our
forefathers' devotion, consecrated to pious uses. Some monasteries
and collegiate cells might have been well spared, and their revenues
otherwise employed ; here and there one, in good towns or cities at
least, for men and women of all sorts and conditions to live in, to
sequester themselves from the cares and tumults of the world, that
were not desirous or fit to marry, or otherwise willing to be troubled
with common affairs, and know not well where to bestow themselves,
to live apart in, for more conveniency, good education, better
company sake ; to follow their studies (I say) to the perfection of
arts and sciences, common good, and, as some truly devoted monks
of old had done, freely and truly to serve God : for these men are
neither solitary, nor idle, as the poet made answer to the husbandman
in ysop, that objected idleness to him, he was never so idle as in
his company ; or that Scipio Africanus in Tully, numquam minus
solus, quam quum solus ; numquam minus otiosus, quam quum essst
otiosus ; never less solitary, than when he was alone, never more
busy, than when he seemed to be most idle.

Here the first passage (you can hardly call it a
sentence) is an example of the " heaps " above referred
to, though it is rather less tangled than some, and in
particular has fewer quotations in foreign tongues. The
middle passage from " Methinks " as far as " tumults of the
world " is not merely good, it is delicious. The rhythm
more than suits, it positively heightens, the sense in
" those fair buildings and everlasting monuments of our
forefathers' devotion, consecrated to pious uses." But
when he arrived at " world " Burton unluckily found that

1 68 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

he had got more to say, and without troubling himself on
the point whether a mere tack-on would not spoil the
fair round cadence of his phrase, he continues to say it
reckless of the, in English, abrupt and obscure relativity
of " that," careless of the fact that you have got to
wander back three lines to find the subject of " know,"
and perfectly ready to make a fresh tack of hardly less
violent afterthought, and yet another, and yet another
still, at " to follow," at " for," and at " or that." It is no
sufficient answer that, as was allowed above, most of
these jointings are harmonious enough, and well enough
proportioned, in themselves. The culpa, and something
rather more than the minima culpa, is the entire neglect
to achieve that " music of long periods " which was
recently spoken of.

Of the three writers who, on the whole, stand at the
head of the seventeenth-century division of their fellows
in prose, if not at the head of all English prose-writers,
Browne (born 1605) was a slightly older man than Milton
(1608), and nearly a decade older than Taylor (1613).
But the differences, even in years, are not such as to insist
upon chronological order in this respect, and those in
other respects do strongly suggest violation of it. The
order, not merely in perfection of prose, but, as it seems
to me, in kind of it ; and the order even of logical if not
of sheer historic time taking the ascending line is
Milton, Taylor, Browne, and in this I propose to consider
them.

Milton. Milton is not only the oldest-fashioned of the three,
but he is also by far the most unequal. His inequality,
which is notorious and undeniable, is indeed so great that
some have gone to the point of altogether denying him
first-rate merit as a prose writer. My late friend, and
sometime chief, the Rev. John Gates, 1 Headmaster of

1 Mr. Gates was an intimate friend of Mark Pattison's ; and if anybody
can imagine Pattisonian flour made up into dough with milk instead of gall,
its yeast unsoured by any religious convulsion, and soft- instead of hard-
baked, the result would not be very unlike the genial personage under whom
I spent six not unmerry years Ici-bas, dans I'ile, long ago.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 169

Elizabeth College, Guernsey a scholar and master of
English, as of the classics, whom his professional occupa-
tions, and perhaps (I may say it without offence or dis-
loyalty to his memory) a certain not unscholarly indolence
of temperament, kept from making the mark in literature
which he might have made, once wrote me an expostu-
lation, long and at least as serious as his humorous
temperament would allow, on the estimate which I had
made of Milton's prose in my History of Elizabethan
Literature. And it is quite certain, not only that Milton
is seldom at his best, but that, when you take him at not
his best, he is often a mass of faults, while he sometimes
allows them entrance (as he never does in his verse) at
that best itself.

The causes of Milton's shortcomings as a prose writer Disputes about
are pretty numerous ; and out of them and their examples their"
very nearly the whole indictment against the prose of the
earlier seventeenth century could be drawn up, except the
counts as to excessive ornament, which would have to be
filled in from Taylor. They were indeed partly what it
is the fashion to call " temperamental " the commendable
earnestness and the most discommendable ill-temper of
the man, unchecked by humour, unrestrained by that
unfeigned reverence for the Muse which redeems even
such gratuitous flings as the famous speech of St. Peter
in Lycidas, leading him constantly to substitute an angry
splutter of abuse for a finished invective. Passing from
the moral to the mental sphere, they were, as in both his
great compeers, and in most of the men of the time,
associated with, or directly brought about by, his great
learning and the extraordinary fulness of his mind, which
led him to cram his sentences with quotation, argument,
parenthesis, and every figured or unfigured trick of eking
and bolstering out sentence and paragraph. But the
greatest snare of all was the same which has been noticed
in Burton the fatal habit of jointing on relative and </
epexegetic clauses. That much of this, if not the whole
of it, comes from the habit of writing to some extent, and
thinking even when not writing, in Latin, is extremely

i?o A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

probable if not positively certain. But, as we shall see,
it sometimes goes near to spoil the finest passages of
all, and constantly impairs the staple of his style and
rhythm. I do not know that I can give a better instance
of this than that which I selected a quarter of a century
ago in one of the previous handlings of this subject
referred to in the Preface. 1

Let us take, however, three of the most famous
passages of all the " Search for Dead Truth " in the
Areopagitica, the account of his education in romance from
the Apology, and the parallel of himself in poetry and prose
from the Reasons of Church Government. The first is
practically faultless :

We boast | our light ; | but if | we look not | wisely [ on the sun

1 " But if his rear and flanks be not impaled, if his backdoor be not
secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book may now and then come
forth and give the assault to some of his old collections in their trenches, it
will concern him then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to get good guards
and sentinels about his received opinions, to walk the round and counter-
round with his fellow-inspectors, fearing lest any of his flock be seduced, who
thus also -would be better instructed, better exercised and disciplined." Had
this sentence terminated at "seduced" all had been well; but the after-
thought ruins it.

2 These groups give occasion for a warning which will apply throughout.
They may, if any one likes, be respectively combined into two di-iambs and
a cretic or molossus, as best pleases the ear.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 171

On this at least the lofty encomium of the Master of
Peterhouse is not extravagant. That Milton's is " the most
extraordinary literary prose, and the most wonderful
poet's prose, embodied in English literature," is hardly a
hyperbole here.

This particular passage, it will be observed, goes on,
for at least some sentences, almost or quite as well as it
has begun ; and the first half of the second paragraph is
admirable. The case is not quite the same with the
next piece :

Next (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye whither
my younger feet wandered ; I betook me among those lofty fables
and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knight-
hood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in
renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every
knight, that he should defend to the expense of his best blood, or
of his life, if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or
matron ; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue
chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by
such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn. And if I found in
the story afterward, any of them, by word or deed, breaking that
oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet, as that which is attri-
buted to Homer, to have written indecent things of the gods. Only
this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that
oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur,
or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stir him up both by
his counsel and his arms, to secure and protect the weakness of any
attempted chastity. So that even these books, which to many
others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I cannot
think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many

172 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

incitements, as you have heard, to the love and steadfast observation
of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.

Thus, from the laureat fraternity of poets, riper years and the
ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of
philosophy ; but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equal
Xenophon : where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and
love, I mean that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only
virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy (the
rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain
sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about) ; and how the
first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing
those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue.

Here, in the last of the two paragraphs, you get the
Miltonic " falling-off." The " romance " paragraph is
faultless ; the first part of the " philosophy " one, down
to " chastity and love " bears it company ; then from
" I mean " to " about " the writer loses step, blunders about
for several lines like a player at blindman's buff, and
with difficulty steadies himself for the run in at the close.

The third, except in a few touches, is less beautiful,
but it is interesting as showing that Milton was quite
capable, when he chose, of gearing most complicated
sentences together without losing thread of construction
or concert of rhythm. The fact is that at this time (for
it was the earliest written of the three) he had not " got
ruffled by fighting," though he hardly had a subject
admitting of the display of his greatest art.

Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein
knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature
to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left
hand. And though I shall be foolish in saying more to this purpose,
yet, since it will be such a folly, as wisest men go about to commit,
having only confessed and so committed, I may trust with more
reason, because with more folly, to have courteous pardon. For
although a poet, soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his
garland and singing robes about him, might, without apology, speak
more of himself than I mean to do ; yet for me, sitting here below
in the cool element of prose, a mortal thing among many readers of
no empyreal conceit, to venture and divulge unusual things of myself,
I shall petition to the gentler sort, it may not be envy to me. I
must say, therefore, that after I had for my first years, by the
ceaseless diligence and care of my father (whom God recompense !),
been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age
would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 173

at the schools, it was found that whether aught was imposed me
by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own
choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly
by this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to
live. But much latelier in the private academies of Italy, whither
I was favoured to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had
in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout (for the
manner is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and
reading there), met with acceptance above what was looked for ;
and other things, which I had shifted in scarcity of books and
conveniences to patch up amongst them, were received with
written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on
men of this side the Alps ; I began thus far to assent both to
them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an
inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour
and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life),
joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let
it die.

It can scarcely be necessary to dwell much on the Close con-
merits of Milton's exercitations in what he calls with MiiSs^tyi
an irony which the usual grudging fairy at his birth had with oratory,
rendered him incapable of appreciating " the cool element
of prose." Those who cannot taste them must either
be congenitally incapable of doing so, or else, like the
excellent critic and scholar whom I have mentioned
above, must be so shocked and disgusted by the faults which
accompany them as to be temporarily disqualified. The
largior aether the peculiar vastness and spaciousness
of the verse is here hardly limited at all in its more
extensive and paragraphic deliverances, and actually
widened as regards the smaller the sentences, clauses,
and prose-lines. The kind is definitely oratorical to
appreciate it fully you must, as again in the case of the
verse, " read it aloud to yourself." Nor is it superfluous
to observe that in such reading, and still more in actual
oral delivery, many of the minor difficulties of construction
disappear under any satisfactory kind of elocution. The
selection of word and phrase has all the cunning of the
poet ; the further ordonnance of clause and cadence enlists
as well the vehemence, the deinotes, of the orator ; and
the whole at its best floats and sweeps itself off in such

174 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

volume as that of the magnificent description of the
Armada :

as the whole tissue of the " Search after Truth," and as
the almost awestruck celebration of the " lofty fables and
romances."

Some of its Yet the faults themselves, from our special as from

faults. other points of view, can only be denied or blinked by an

equally uncritical partisanship or state of intellectual
bribery. First and foremost, and (as has been pointed
out) not less destructive of rhythm in sound than of
coherency in sense, is the unlucky practice of tagging and
tailing on. Just before the great Truth passage (foK an
additional instance) there is another, inferior enough, it
must be confessed, in tone and temper, but made worse
by a fault of this kind :

There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible
loss and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to, more than
if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens, and ports, and
creeks ; it hinders and retards the importation of our richest
merchandise, truth : nay, it was first established and put in practice
by anti-christian malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish,
if it were possible, the light of reformation, and to settle falsehood ;
little differing from that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his
Alcoran, by the prohibiting of printing. It is not denied, but gladly
confessed, we are to send our thanks and vows to Heaven, louder
than most of nations, for that great measure of truth which we enjoy,
especially in those main points between us and the pope, with his
appurtenances the prelates : but he who thinks we are to pitch our
tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation, that
the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come
to beatific vision ; that man by this very opinion declares, that he is
yet far short of truth.

Here " the Turk and his Alcoran " are very little
wanted are, in fact, a quite evident afterthought of the
writer's. And as an afterthought he leaves them, without

1 This dwindling of dochmiac, pseon, and amphibrach has been noticed
before, and is, indeed, one of the most definitely noticeable schemes of ending.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 175

troubling himself either to bring out, as he easily might,
by the slightest alteration and addition, that the Turkish
policy is the censorship policy carried to " Thorough,"
or, at no greater cost, to mould his actual addition into
any rhythm consistent and coherent with the preceding
clauses. It is, in fact, a sort of aside : a deliberate
excrescence in sound as in thought. I should not myself
object, on our present score (though many people would),
to yet another passage * a little farther on, though the
argument seems to me singularly silly and unpractical. For
though the first sentence is complicated, it runs unbroken
in sense and cadence ; and a fit reader (let the others
perish !) will get to the end of it without stumbling-block
to his mind's feet or discord to his mind's ear. But in
the second, mark how the sentence faints and squanders
itself out in sense and rhythm alike, merely to bring
in those here most superfluous, if intrinsically distinguished,
persons, Proteus and Micaiah.

A survey of the selected examples will, I think, show Partial foot-
that Milton uses a very composite arrangement of shorter anal y sis -
and longer feet, which produces a definitely sustained
level, or very flat curve, of general rhythm in the clause
and sentence. There is much less of rise and fall in him
than in Hooker ; he shoots up at once, and, as is familiarly
said, " stays there," unless he is brought down by one of
his unlucky disarrangements of over-lap. I do not seem
to find in him the large number of monosyllabic feet

1 " When a man hath been labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines
of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth
his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in
his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind
and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument ;
for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow
bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valour
enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth.
For who knows not that truth is strong, next to the Almighty ; she needs no
policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious ; those are the
shifts and the defences that error uses against her power : give her but room,
and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old
Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, but
then rather she turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps
tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she
be adjured into her own likeness."

176 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

which distinguishes some of the best English prose ;
though, of course, he often starts with one to launch him
up with its necessary consequent of pause, as in the
" Truth " of the passage so often referred to. Milton
must inevitably have been fond of Plato, and there are
considerable resemblances between the styles of the two
men. And if this seem to any one (it would to me
have seemed at one time) a reflection on the equal
excellence of the Greek, let us remember that ancient
critics by no means regarded their Plato in that light,
but spoke of him l as a mixture of faults and merits, a
libertine wanderer from the chaste to the meretricious
and so forth exactly as some are wont to characterise
our great seventeenth-century prose-men.

Taylor -. the There have been few differences of opinion as to the

esdmate y of lgh ^S^ 1 , if not highest, place occupied by Jeremy Taylof as
him. a virtuoso in English prose harmony ; though the absolute

merits of his style, considered apart from mere sound, and
the necessary minimum of sense-connection therewith, have
by no means been matters of such general agreement.
The masculine appreciation of South himself, as we shall
see, no mean master of rhythm revolted early at the
repetitions of " So have I seen " and the over-poetic
v diction of " fringes of the north star." And while recent,
or comparatively recent, fancy for extreme ornateness has
again raised estimates of Taylor, there are those who
can hardly follow Coleridge and De Quincey in regarding
him, not merely as a great word-master, but as a thinker
to match. We, however, are only concerned with the
above restricted pacta conventa which, however, still leave
a little ground for argument, or at least analysis, as to the
exact character of Taylor's harmony, and the means
whereby it may be thought to have been attained. Two
passages, practically three, of some length, shall .be given
and scanned ; nor is it perhaps superfluous to remark
that Taylor, like Hooker, "scans himself" (in more than
the French sense of the reflexive) with singular in-
evitableness.

1 Both Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Longinus speak thus.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 177

1 Some people prefer " Prayer " in this sense as a monosyllable. I do not ;
but they can take it or make it so.

178 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

1 A dochmiac by grace-slur " intemp'rate. "

2 Slurred again to dochmiac "the dishon'rable."

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 179

Of the beauty of all this there can assuredly be little Rhythmical
dispute ; and it is only fair to draw special attention to characteristics -
the way in which the Taylorian anacolutha (which do
exist) and the Taylorian sentence-length (in which he
almost vies with Clarendon) are nearly always so cunningly
adjusted as neither to give the jolts and jars in sound,
nor to produce the tangle and obscurity of sense, which
are too frequent in Clarendon himself, in Milton, and in
others. One reason a little, but only a very little,
extraneous to our strictest province is that Taylor
affects illustration and description very much more than
argument or narration, and that, as Mr. Ruskin (the
parallel has been used before and may be again) has
finally shown, illustration and description of a sufficiently
panoramic kind are capable, like panorama itself, of almost
indefinite prolongation without confusion. But it would
be exceedingly unfair not to count to him for virtue
his avoidance of the breaks of rhythm into which, even

1 Slurred easily into a dochmiac, according to the pronunciations of the
time, either as "to th' unevenness," "to the uneve'ness," or "to the
une'enness," all of which were, at the time, tolerable and likely. Later, as
we shall see, wslurred, but slightly quantified, six- or perhaps even seven-
syllabled groups are met with ; but I doubt if Taylor would have pronounced
these as such.

i8o A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

in such matter, most of his great contemporaries would
certainly have fallen.

It will further be observed (and it is worth while to
turn back specially to the Hooker passages to see it) that,
as a necessary consequence of this long-breathedness (for
\ong-windedness has an ill-name), his rhythm is very
much more various, more polycentred, than Hooker's.
Instead of one, not indeed monotonous but somewhat
regular, soar and stoop in each sentence, there is, in the
groups of clauses which may be taken as the equivalents
of an ordinary sentence, a perpetual unflurried flutter a
soft whirr and rustling of gentle rise and gentler fall like
that of the golden and silver wings rising and floating
and falling in Christina Rossetti's poem.

It follows that the rhythmical kola in Jeremy exhibit
the most extreme and artful variation, and that he *uses
the utmost liberty of foot-extension or shortening. I do
not think that I have gone wrong, or exposed my system
to a charge of inconsistency, by allowing slurred dochmiacs
of six or even seven possible syllables. 1 For it must be
remembered that Taylor's prose is nothing if not spoken
prose, and the liberty of slur or even (saving his Right
Reverence) " patter " in speech is not only great at all
times, but, if carefully and not too lavishly used, one of
the most cherished and effective devices of the orator. 2
Other noticeable things in him are the frequency, boldness,
and success with which he uses sequence of the same
feet, while avoiding at the same time any offensively
metrical effect. I do not say that there is no blank verse
in him. It is practically impossible unless a writer
goes through his work deliberately and artificially breaks
them up to avoid in English such things as

1 We shall see that they recur in the less varied, but equally oratorical,
prose of the Augustans.

2 Other nations, of course, use it much more than we do. I remember,
the first time that I heard M. Renan speak, wondering whether I knew any
French at all so apparently impossible was it to follow his runs of huddled
slur-syllables with a crash of emphasis on the last. One got used to it before
long ; and indeed Frenchmen have since told me that Renan was exception-
ally given to the trick. But English speakers often take the same liberty,
though to a less extent.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 181

Unless we are detained with violence,
or

It strives to climb the battlements of Heaven. 1

But there are very much fewer than there are in
Ruskin, and those which are found are even more cun-
ningly bewitched into silence, muffled and disguised so
that they pass even a vigilant sentinel-ear.

This freedom from confusion of the harmonies may
have been partly due both in Taylor's case and in that,
to which we shall come shortly, of Browne to the fact
that the inclination of both for verse was, for men of their
time, surprisingly small. Both have left a little, but very
little, and of a quality which, though in neither case
contemptible, is in neither worthy of special remark.
How thoroughly Jeremy was a prose-man, despite his love
for poetic diction and his extraordinary plastic power
over words, could not be better shown than in the above-
quoted phrase, " And it rose | and sung as if it had
learned | music | and motion | from an angel | as he
passed | through the air | about | his ministries | here

below." The form is as musical as the substance ; but it
is utterly prose-music it is much* if there is a sort of
underhum of Ionic a minore? which, as I have endeavoured
to show elsewhere, 3 is doubtfully an English metre at all,
and which itself can only be made out by rather outrageous
and unnatural handling in verse, but which is a very
charm and spell in prose, 4

Yet the greatest of these three if not in all ways, yet
certainly in those which we are more specially treading

1 Observe, too, the happy boldness with which he allows himself runs of
iambics, " And like | the breath | of hell," defeating the blank-verse effect
by the succession of metrically incompatible feet.

2 "And it rose and | sung as if it | had learned music" or "-sic and

motion | from an angel | as he passed through." Pasons, as usual, optional.

3 E.g. Historical Manual of English Prosody, pp. 285, 286.

4 Those who like to venture upon the perilous and aleatory task of
assigning special foot-combinations as sure rhythm-getters, will find in the
above scanned passages some tempting matter. I point and pass.

1 82 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Browne : is Browne. His greatness is indeed rather in the sentence
Coleridge's than in the paragraph, though he has paragraphs of

charge against

him. unsurpassed architecture ; and he may seem sometimes

to rely, more exclusively than he should, on sheer balance
for his effects. He has less virtuosity than Taylor ; and
I should not make on him the note that I made above as
to " pattern " combinations. On one of the counts of
Coleridge's charge against him disorderly syntax he is
in fact much more guiltless than either Taylor or Milton ;
it is almost impossible to find in him the cumbrous and
jolting anacolutha which constantly mar both the sense
and the sound of the one, and which are rather disguised
and carried off than actually prevented by the smoother-
flowing current of the other. Even as regards corruption
of vocabulary (another Coleridgean accusation) I doubt
whether I myself, a good many years ago, 1 did not rrlake
unwise concessions in admitting exceptions to Browne on
the score of Latinism and of catachresis of words. I had
not then studied the strictly rhythmical side of prose as I
have since. I shall not, even now, say that Browne's
peculiarities in this respect are always justifiable on this
score, or indeed on any ; but I have made sure in a great
many cases, and I believe I might, with a sufficient ex-
penditure of time, make sure in the majority, that when
he substitutes " clarity " for " clearness," when he pours
upon the vulgar head the perhaps to it doubtfully precious
balms of " abbreviature " and " exantlation " ; even when
he has such traps for the unwary as " equable " in the
sense of " equitable," and " gratitude " in that of " a
grateful person," he is not only manipulating the xena
the " strange " words which strike the sense in
permissible and laudable fashion, but is actually and
deliberately adding to the sonority and harmony of his
phrase.

Special charac- It will almost or quite follow from the two points just
terofhis indicated Browne's special attention to the sentence

charm,

rather than to the paragraph, though not omitting or
neglecting this, and his further attention to the particular

1 In my History of Elizabethan Literature (First Edition, 1887).

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 183

though not exactly " lonely " word that his rhythmical
attraction, as well as other parts or qualities of his style,
is singularly pervading. The Tyrian purple of Milton's
best passages suits the banners of a very king of prose ;
but these banners issue forth irregularly and in a terribly
undisciplined fashion. Taylor mixes and applies his
colours far more deliberately ; but he exercises consider-
able economy, not indeed in the mixing but in the
application. Browne's style, on the other hand, is shot
with a peculiar iridescence throughout, though he appor-
tions the degree of its brightness to some extent accord-
ing to the subject, giving less of it in the business-like
miscellany of the Pseudodoxia, and the central miniature
cyclopaedia of curiosities in the Garden of Cyrus, 1 than in
the beginning and close of this latter, in most of the
Religio, and in the whole of Hydriotaphia. In Christian
Morals and the Letter to a Friend we have the secrets
of loom and dye-vat curiously exposed midway the
materials are all there, but the actual processes themselves
are in different stages of perfection, " forwarded " but not
" finished."

It follows from these considerations that Browne and special
requires slightly different treatment from most if not from Q r f e ^ t tmer
all other figures in this book. The world-famous passage required,
in Urn Burial, " Now since these dead bones," is known
in its first half-dozen lines probably to thousands who do
not know the context at all ; and the paragraph of which
it forms part, perhaps to hundreds who do not know much
or anything more of Browne. But, as a matter of fact,
the entire chapter in which this occurs is an unbroken
and, at most, spaced and rested symphony ; and, at the
risk of disgusting the reader, I shall attempt the feat
(some may say the outrage) of scanning the entire

1 Yet in this there are some especial magnificences, as thus: "And
therefore Providence hath arched and paved the great house of the world,
with colours of mediocrity, that is, blue and green, above and below the sight,
moderately | terminating | the acies | of the eye " ; or the splendid section
beginning, " Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible," and

ending, "The sun | itself | is but the dark j simulacrum, \ and light | but Y
the shadow, I of God."

184 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

rhapsody by division, and in some parts by actual
quantification. It will give us more to go upon, in the
final attempt to reach some systematic conclusions, than
many shorter ones could. But I shall also hope to add
at least one paragraph-piece, and a large number of
isolated sentences and phrases, to illustrate the magni-
ficence of the whole. The results may be but as the
results of " arming " deep-sea leads ; but those are often
valuable, and so may be these.

The finale of Now j since \ these dead : bones \ have already \ out-lasted \ the
Urn Burial. - ^ _ ^ ^-~=~~~- - ~ - ~

living ones | of Methuselah, | and in a yard | under ground, | and

Time, | which antiquates | Antiquities | and hath an art | to make

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE

185

too early
stretcheth

old, | and
our days,

before
misery

the date | of age.
makes I Alcmena's

Adversity
nights, and

being | is
or never |

time | hath no wings | unto it. | But the most | tedious

that | which can unwish itself, | content | to be nothing,

to have been, | which was beyond | the malcontent | of Job, | who

and as it were | an abortion. |

as emblems | of
vain -glory, | and

never | damped with | the necessity
tions | had the advantage | of ours,

and,

of oblivion. | Even old | ambi-
in the attempts | of their vain-

1 86 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of perjpetuity | even | by everlasting | languages. 1

1 In this short paragraph what De Quincey would call the systole and
diastole of rhythm may be studied almost as well as anywhere.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNA TE STYLE

187

Hippocrates' | patients, | or Achilles'
naked | nominations, | without deserts

horses | in Homer, | under
and noble | acts, | which are

1 It is seldom that Browne allows himself this ugly homaoteleuton.

1 88 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and Pharaoh
In vain do

is sold | for balsams,
individuals I hope for

Immortality, | or any | patent |

1 A blank verse, again rare.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 189

his nature.

living | death,
men shall wish

when life | puts despair | on the damned ; when
the coverings I of mountains, I not I of monuments, I

and annihilations | shall be courted. |

have studi-
boisterous,

1 90 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

1 Or a molossus at pleasure.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 191

The possibility of comment on this long passage is interim ob-
servation

overture.

almost illimitable. But one observation is too important servatlon on

not to be made at once. I first attempted the scansion
of the opening sentence many years ago, and have some-
times effected a few alterations at intervals since. I am
not now sure whether it is better to take the opening five
words together as a heavily weighted dochmiac (or at
least a spondee + molossus), or to let them be mono-
syllabic feet-thuds, as of earth dropping on the coffin-lid
or the urn. But this will not affect what I am going
to say. I had never even noticed, until I was actually
writing this comment, and therefore I need hardly assure
the reader that I had never, even half unconsciously, led
up to the discovery, that in the above scansion no two
identical feet l ever follow each other, not so much as on a
single occasion. Now we have observed, from the first,
that variety of foot arrangement, without definite equiva-
lence, appears to be as much the secret of prose rhythm as
uniformity of value, with equivalence or without it, appears
to be that of poetic metre. Here is perhaps the very
finest phrase of English prose itself one of the finest
by something like a common agreement. And here,
arrived at and verified with an entire absence of design,
is the presence of that variety, pushed to what might
have seemed antecedently an almost impossible point.
Of course, this may be merely a coincidence ; but it is
surely rather a remarkable one. 2

The almost or quite equally famous close of the The close of
Garden of Cyrus merits equally careful study : \k& Garden of

But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the
five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking
thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth pre-

1 These remarks concern \hzfirst paragraph, " Now say " : but there are
not very many such sequences elsewhere. Monosyllables do not count.

2 In the less exalted and " full - dressed " passages similar feet do, of
course, occur in couples or even groups, but variety and gradation are much
more prominent. The reader will not, I hope, have missed the suggestion
of those jz.*-syllable feet, which are often noticed elsewhere as possibilities,
though they can be technically avoided by admitting the constant apostropha-
tion (especially in the definite article) of the time, or by dividing words on my
own older, and not yet quite abandoned, principle.

192 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

cogitations ; making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome
groves. Besides, Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the oneiro-
critical masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that
there is little encouragement to dream of paradise itself. Nor will
the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep ;
wherein the dulness of that sense shakes hands with delectable
odours ; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any
delight raise up the ghost of a rose.

Night, which Pagan theology could make the daughter of Chaos,
affords no advantage to the description of order ; although no lower
than that mass can we derive its genealogy. All things began in
order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again ; according
to the ordainer of order and mystical mathematics of the city of
heaven.

Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I
find no such effects in these drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep
our eyes open longer were but to act our antipodes. The huntsmen
are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in
Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from
everlasting sleep ? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when
sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again.

This, on the whole, is in a minor key, and uses more
muffled instruments. The quaintness of the master has
a little (only a little) got the better of his magnificence.
But the extraordinary subtlety and variety of it, and the
unerring adjustment of the different rhythms to the
different senses, are almost equally apparent. Note, for
instance, the shift of cadence in the closes of the three
paragraphs : the sarcastic liveliness of " the ghost of a
rose " ; the splendour (here, at least, at almost its full
height) of " according | to the ordainer of order | and
mystical mathematics of the city | of heaven " ; the
solemnity of the cluster of a sounds, and the arrangement
of monosyllable, anapaest, and iamb, in " all | shall awake
again."

These minor adjustments of Browne's, which it would
have taken a long chapter to exhibit fully in the longer
passage, may be further exampled here in several. Note
the almost literal " dropping off" of the paeon, amphibrach,

and iamb, " in these drowsy | approaches j of sleep."
Note the identical movement, doubtless inspired by the

same motive, of " But the quincunx I of heaven | runs

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 193

low." | Note the arch of the period, " But who can be
drowsy | at that hour | which freed us from everlasting

sleep," and the " bearing up " of the second sentence by
strong dochmiac combinations, so that the second half
can easily gear itself on. It is one of the faults in style
of most writers of this period, from Milton downwards,
that they neglect this precaution, and worse than neglect
it conducting a phrase to an almost dying close, and V
then, as it were, rudely kicking it up again with an un-
expected appendix. Browne does not do this, but by a
prodigal and almost prodigious variety achieves all his
effects, minor and major. How far he calculated it, one
cannot say ; but it is at least noteworthy that it is much
less obvious in the work which he did not himself publish
than in that which he did. And it was insufficient atten-
tion to this peculiarity which, when Johnson came to study
him, injured, as we shall see, the result of the Johnsonian
following.

But let us attempt the promised sylva of shorter short passages
quotations, illustrating this and other peculiarities. They
shall be arranged chronologically, and in the order in
which they occur in the different works :

Here the first three kola, being parallel, end similarly
in three amphibrachs :

between us

-icated

affords me

But the last, which is the antithesis-consequent to all
three, lengthens itself out, runs quite differently, and
closes with a dochmiac of mild expostulatory meditation,
1 Browne and the Pope.

194 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

separable, as these dochmiacs often are, into single
syllables, as if the writer were greatly shocked and dis-
turbed at having to pronounce the offensive term.

Here is one rather longer ; not perhaps very elaborate
in appearance, but one which, when it is duly examined,
will be found singularly accomplished :

ledged | therein, | though
Divinity ; I for, I in a wise

in a blinder way, | something | of
supputation, I all things I begin I and

end | in the Almighty. | There is a nearer \ way \ to Heaven \ than
Homer's \ chain : \ an easy \ Logic \ may conjoin \ Heaven \ and
Earth \ in one Argument, \ and with less \ than a Sorites \ resolve \
all things \ into God.

It would be difficult to find, anywhere, more simply
beautiful examples of rhythm than the two italicised
passages.

Here again is a quainter but hardly a finer sample :

In close connection with this occurs another altitude
of prose harmony :

1 One of Browne's double (or enveloped} meanings. " Persisted there "
involves not merely "maintained this position," but "refused to go beyond."

2 I think the word-division in this rhythm is necessary, as it is in the
metre of Rossetti's

Ce |cily, Ger|trude, Mag|dalen[e],

to bring out the marvellous beauty of the name by the help of the pause.
Whether Browne intended the final e to be valued or not matters little.

3 Why, this is Hell : nor am I out of it."

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 195

The famous passage about his life being a " miracle of
thirty years " might be added to these from the Religio :
but we must not draw too much from one only of such
copious founts. 1

A few of the " golden couplets disclosed " in those From the
nests of such things, the Urn-Burial and the Garden of ' H y driota P hia -
Cyrus, may be selected, even after the selections above.
Nothing, indeed, could be a much better sample of the
music of Browne than the opening of the Hydriotaphia>
or rather of its " Dedicatory Letter " :

When the funeral pyre was out, and the last valediction over, men
took a lasting adieu of their interred friends, little expecting the
curiosity of future ages should comment upon their ashes, and, having
no old experience of the duration of their reliques, held no opinion of
such after-considerations.

But who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be
buried ? who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be
scattered ? The reliques of many lie like the ruins of Pompeys, in
all parts of the earth ; and when they arrive at your hands, these
may seem to have wandered far, who in a direct and meridian travel,
have but few miles of known earth between yourself and the pole.

This opening is of the highest " curiosity " :

When the fujneral pyre | was out
And the last | valedicjtion over

has in itself an almost excessively metrical correspond-
ence it at once invites completion :

1 One amaritude of the most excellent may be given, because it is of the
kind which at once and utterly, in the writing for the one, in the reading for the
many, dis-herds and separates the sheep from the goats : " The vulgarity |
of those judgments | that wrap | the Church | of God | in Strabo's | cloak | "
(i. Ivi. overture). For irony of phrase and thought and rhythm combined,
that seems to me unsurpassed : especially when I think of some popular
writers of our day brought to the bar of Sir Thomas for "vulgarity of
judgment."

196 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Then the mourn |er he turned | about
And his head | he did sad|ly cover ; J

but only if you look at it in a poetical way, and hear it
with a metrical ear. As prose, the iambic ending of one

clause (" was out ") and the trochaic (" over ") of the other
defeat the suggestion, which is further smothered by the
entirely non- correspondent rhythm of the succeeding
words, " men took a lasting adieu," etc.

For a short example, showing the sudden pyrotechnic
effect (in dealing elsewhere with Browne 2 I have ventured
to question the banality or banausia sometimes connected
with this word), we can hardly find a better than

but the open \ magnificence \ of
of clay.

Nor only | these concealed | pieces,
antiquity, \ ran much | in the artifice

Or the often quoted

Or the quaint fancy, centring on a double alliteration :

Or that other more splendid passage, illuminated as it
were almost from the outset by the light, and dominated
by the crash, of " terra damnata" with the strange and
purposely muffled contrast of " aged cinders."

From the But the " Garden " will not be left behind the " Yard,"
Ganfcw of ^oug^ we cu u no ^ so many herbs and flowers from it.

" Gardens | were before gardeners and but some
- U
hours after | the earth " is an early and effective

example of an extremely simple combination dissyllabic
and trisyllabic feet only, yet giving a prose -rhythm
absolutely incapable of being confused with verse-metre.
More complex, and remarkable because of the fact

1 "This author is so ignorant that he imagines the ancients to have gone
to funerals with uncovered heads" (Zoilus infuturo).

2 Cambridge History of English Literature, vii. 242 note.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 197

that rather elaborate rhythmical form is given to a mere
statement without any special preciousness of thought or
choiceness of phraseology, is

expounded | the emphati cal 2 | word.

In the following the Johnsonian germs are clear :

Two passages, at least, from the curious Letter to a The Letter to
Friend should be included in this exhibition. It would a Fnend -
appear that there was a strong personal feeling at the
back of Browne's professional interest in this case of a
consumptive patient who died at thirty ; and it has
chequered his singular melancholy never funereal in a
commonplace or ugly fashion, but always near to the
dirige with a placebo of quaintness, as if to keep off an
actual breakdown. But how little he has forgotten not
his swashing blow but his sleight of hand may be seen
from the end-notes of this four-barred phrase :

He that is staidly inclined were unwise to pass his days in |

Portugal

Cholical persons will find little comfort in Austria or | Vienna
He that is weak-legged must not be in love with | Rome
Nor an infirm head with Venice | or Paris.

1 I think Browne very likely intended the "eds" to be valued in these
words.

2 Paeon and iambic, or dochmiac and monosyllabic foot, are at discretion
here.

198 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Or, to take a pronounced humour-stroke, not out of
keeping with the House of Melancholy :

And Christian Christian Morals has had harder things said of it than
any other of Browne's books : and it may be admitted to
stand to the rest somewhat in the relation of Samson
Agonistes to the rest of Milton's verse, with the additional
disadvantage of never having been revised by its author.
Its singular confusion (or from another point of view,
parallelism) with the Letter to a Friend as if the writer
had never quite made up his mind whether both were to
stand, or only one, and if both, how the contents were to
be finally distributed is quite decisive as to both * being
half-done work. And there are not a few passages in the
Morals where the phrase and cadence seem to invite, if
not to insist upon, further filing and chiselling, further
symphonising and counterpointing. Yet hardly the
Hydriotaphia, or the Garden of Cyrus, contains more
magnificent descants in little, though the sententious
arrangement prevents any such opus majus or maximum as
that quoted above. Observe the dexterity of this :

where it may be observed that if both verbs in the first
clause had had the -s, or both the -th, the rhythm would
have been not a little inquinated, as Browne himself
might have said.

On the other hand, I think he would, in final revision,
have reduced the alliteration and given more concin-
nity to the cadence in

1 More than one hypothesis as to Browne's intentions may not be un-
reasonable as that the Letter might, at one time, have been intended
to be a sort of minor episode or enclave in the Morals ; at another to have
opened, as it does, with the narrative part of the particular case, and then
have exalted and enlarged itself into the general treatise or even something
fuller. The two are, in a way, Browne's Holy Dying and his Holy Living.

vi THE TRIUMPH OF THE ORNATE STYLE 199

Culpable beginnings have found commendable conclusions ; and
infamous courses pious retractations,

where also the two clauses end too much alike.

He can sometimes (as in Sect. vii. of Part ii.) commit
the fault of adjusting a tail of clauses badly.

If the Almighty will not spare us according to His merciful
capitulation at Sodom, if His goodness please not to pass over a
great deal of Bad for a small pittance of Good, or to look upon us in
the lump ; there is slender hope for mercy or sound presumption of
fulfilling half His will | either in persons or nations : || they who excel
in some virtues being so often defective in others ; ]|| few men driving
at the extent and amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by
their best parts, and others by their worst, are content to rest in
those virtues which others commonly want.

Here I think Browne's critical " flapper " would have
struck at " will " when at his best and wariest ; might in
an easier mood have refrained till " nations " ; but would,
if present and vigilant at any regular revision, have
redoubled his blows to secure a full stop at " others." As
for the rest of the sentence, it is a mere appendage, almost
as bad as Milton's worst.

On the other hand, in spite of some of the most
sesquipedalian words, of the most artificially and over-
artificially contorted antitheses, in spite of a hint of
grotesque about the quaintness, how much of the splendour
of Browne's idiosyncrasy is here :

1 A "sixer," I think.

200 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CH. vi

And how far more splendid still, how absolutely of
the first order, are two short phrases to be found within a
page of each other :

Acquaint thy self with | the Choragium | of the stars,
and

Behold thyself | by inward | optics | and the Crystalline | of thy
soul.

And indeed, if any one would acquaint himself with
the choragium of the stars of English prose if he would,
from a different point of analogy, look through the
Crystalline of its soul it is to this seventeenth-century
division that he must turn. I could add examples from
Others other and lesser stars of this galaxy, but still such as
omitted s ^ e< ^ tne starr y comfort. Glanvill, not merely in the
famous sentence which, " like morn from Memnon," drew
from Edgar Poe the harmony of Ligeia ; Thomas
Burnet, in his tones as of a softened Apocalypse, may
seem to demand admission ; while much earlier, my friend
and predecessor, the late David Masson, would have
remonstrated with me for not including Drummond of
Hawthornden in the Cypress Grove ; and others would
press for the anonymous " Essay on Death," improperly
ascribed to Bacon. But the tale is yet long, and it is
of a character specially dangerous to lengthen.

CHAPTER VII

THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN

The charm of seventeenth-century ornateness Glanvill But such
ornateness not for all work The forging of the plant for
this Ben Jonson High value of the Discoveries Hobbes
His eminence and its contrasted character The " Race " and
" Love " passages of Human Nature Clarendon.

AT the close of the last chapter the opinion was pro- The charm of

visionally expressed that the period of seventeenth- century 60 '

century ornate style (extending over rather more than ornateness.

two generations in the conventional sense of that word)

was the crown and flower of English prose in regard to

beauty and originality of rhythmical form. 1 It is too

early yet (if indeed it will not always be so) to decide

finally what the special characteristics of that beauty were ;

we must see the rest of the development, and especially

that of the only really competing period 1820 to 1890

before fixing on, or rather suggesting, these even to

the extent permissible in literary enquiry. But enough

document should have been given, and perhaps more

than enough comment, whereon to base some general

remarks.

If the fact of the charm be denied, there is no use in Glanvill.
counter-affirmation. The ear which is insensible thereto
would not have its dead nerves vivified though one of the
other dead came to testify to the matter. Take illud
Glanvillianum itself : " Man doth not yield himself to the

1 "The shout of a king is among them" as Balaam, the son of Beor,
that early and unfortunate but characteristic type of a "literary man," ob-
served of the children of Israel or " Jacobel," if any one prefers it.

202 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the
weakness of his feeble will." The sentiment is great and
Heaven knows ! appealing ; the aura or penumbra of
expression (which some good souls would fain identify
with the meaning itself, lest they allow too much to form)
is better. But how much of this, and how much more,
impossible to bind to the meaning at all except by
sheer voluntary association, is due purely to vowel and
consonant music, and to rhythmical arrangement ! l

Nowhere perhaps better, though it may be (and
fortunately) in a hundred other places as well, can we see
the greatest difference between prose and verse rhythm ;
between, that is to say, rhythm diverse and rhythm uniform.
The charms of the latter are not likely to be denied or
minimised here ; nor are those of the third and fourth
rhythms, that of music and that of spoken rhetoric, which
attach and part themselves so cunningly, and in some
cases it would seem so deludingly, to and from the others.
We know how one kind of rhythm, falling in with strong
temporary assistance of mood, will for a time exalt and
sustain sheer gibberish like the words of Lilliburlero,
bombastic drivel like those of the Marseillaise. We
know how, to come to nobler and cleaner matter, the
more uniform rhythm of poetry supplies one hardly
dares to say how much of the magic of Shelley and of
Shakespeare. This other, or prose, witchcraft I suppose
appeals to fewer than the spells of the older muse. The
variation of the clause-ends (already indicated more than

once as a source of sublimity) " angels," " utterly," and
then the clenching " will " the way in which this last
pulls up and fortifies the luscious and almost choriambic

1 This arrangement is a peculiarly audacious justification of the old
assertion that "no kind of rhythm is denied to prose." The latter half

"save only | through the weakness | of his feeble | will," is by itself almost
insolently metrical. But the echo of the entirely different opening, "Man |

ionic suggestion) " to the angels " intimates the tune of the end.

vii THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 203

or ionic paeons, lest the movement should be too effeminate,
the solemn intruded note "unto | death | utterly" all
these things are wonderful.

The investigation and degustation of them may be, I But such or-
have said, a delight to the few ; but the beauty of the jKfwork 1
whole, if less voluptuously appreciated, may be, it is hoped,
a joy to many these delights and joys being almost
endlessly repeated and varied in the greater and lesser
writers of the period. But without entering into the
various arguments which may be urged against ornate
style of the kind, such as the difficulty of maintaining it
at its best, and the liability to positive ugliness and
disorder in inefficient hands, there is one consideration
which may be properly, and indeed must in propriety, be
taken here. It is obvious that extremely, delicately, and
complicatedly rhythmed prose of this kind is by no
means extensively or universally fit for what has been
called " the instrument of the average purpose." It is
not merely that the ordinary reader is, as the old and
often-quoted anecdote about Gautier and Girardin has it,
" made uncomfortable by the style," but that that style is
intrinsically unsuitable for direct and methodical ex-
position ; doubtfully and only occasionally suitable for
plain narration ; critically impossible as a vehicle of
conversation, scientific instruction, practical argument,
and the whole range or ranges of what is succinctly called
" business." The very users of it confess this in various
ways. We want, as Beatrice says, " another for working
days."

Accordingly we should expect to find, and we do find, The forging of

that, side by side with the more many -centred and ai
elaborate rhythms, plainer prose appears throughout this
period itself. And especially if we remember the course
of the " other harmony " during the same time, and the
ultimate (temporary-ultimate, of course) triumph of the
uniform stopped couplet, we shall not be surprised to find
something similar occurring here.

It has indeed been already shown that, in the first de-
liberate prose-writing that of Fisher and his followers

204 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

the simple antithetic or parallel balance-swing is the limit
of rhythmical tendency ; that polycentred harmonies do
not appear ; that this is even more perceptible in Ascham
and even in Lyly, though tricks of phrase and concerts of
thought variegate and half muffle it here ; and that even
the wonderful harmonies of Hooker are not, as a rule,
very elaborate. Further, some of the very writers who
have been noticed in the last two chapters, like Lyly,
might be, and have been, claimed rather for this. Putting
aside the usual pregnancy of his thought and the occa-
sional brilliancy of his phrase, Bacon is not a writer very
ornate or Composite, hardly even Corinthian, in rhythm.
Neither is Burton. In Bacon's pupils and admirers,
Jonson and Hobbes, in Clarendon (who, however, draws
on himself some of the censures invited by the symphonic
writers, though he does not give us much of their solace),
and in others, we find the making of the line which leads
straight up to the great plain style of the later seventeenth,
the whole of the eighteenth, and the earliest nineteenth
centuries. They will need briefer treatment, as they give
less poignant and less multifold pleasure, than their
fellows. But they are not to be despised ; and, like
those fellows, it may be doubted whether they have been
surpassed, in their own way, while their followers had
practically the field to themselves in the next.

Ben Jonson. We are at some, though not at very serious, dis-
advantage, as regards Ben Jonson's prose, in that we
possess no single finished prose work of considerable size,
undoubted finish, and deliberate literary pretension.
The prefaces and prose parts of the Plays cannot be held
as such ; the Drummond conversations are short-hand
and second-hand fragments ; the English Grammar could
hardly give much of the kind we want, and does give
less than it might ; the " Discourse of Poesy," which, in
this as in other ways, ought to have been specially
precious, does not apparently exist, nor can we even
(without throwing any doubt on Drummond's good faith)
be certain that it ever did exist, except as a project.

There remains the curious work variously entitled

viz THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 205

Explorata, Discoveries, and Timber ; and some of us are High value
not dissatisfied with it as building material. Every one
must be grateful for the trouble which Professor Schelling
in America took, partially, a good many years ago, and
M. Castellain in France more recently on a more ex-
tensive scale, in the way of identifying Ben's classical
and other authorities and sources. But it is not illiberal
or outrecuidant to say that every one who knew these
originals must have recognised them long before even
Professor Schelling wrote ; and that the verdict of whole-
sale plagiarism which others have delivered, on the strength
of further collation, must be broken by any competent
court of critical appeal. If this is beyond our province,
the Discoveries, had they been a direct unmanipulated
translation, avowed or unavowed, of a single book, would
still belong to it eminently.

For whatever be the origin of their thought, 1 the
vehicle of their expression is pure English, and English
of a type remarkable in itself, to a great extent novel,
and extremely germinal. Elizabethan translations had
been, as we have seen, numerous and interesting, but as a
rule couched in styles with which those of their originals
had very little to do, except in distant and roundabout
ways. Classical form had exercised great influence on
Ascham and Cheke ; little on North or even Holland.
But Ben succeeded while manifesting an originality
beside which that of more apparently spontaneous writers
is merely childish in assimilating with due transference
of key, the sententious quality of the silver Latins, who
were his special cult, in at the same time maintaining
English quality, and in adapting both to a plain style
such as had never yet been achieved. He preserves his
kind cannot but preserve the balance of Ascham and
Lyly as his chief rhetorical instrument, but he raises the

1 And it may be just pardonable, in view of some recent utterances, to
remind readers that the most interesting things in the book, the remarks on
Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Bacon, and others, can have no indebtedness
to Horace or to Heinsius, to Scaliger or to Seneca ; while the selection, co-
adaptation, and application of the borrowed phrases to express Ben's views
constitute a work more really original than most utterances that are guiltless
of literature.

206 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

comparatively commonplace style of the former to a far
higher power, and entirely discards the fantastic vocabu-
lary, and the frippery generally, of the latter. For the
most part, too, he avoids the extreme Latinising in which
his younger contemporaries and immediate successors
indulged a word like " umbratical," which he was almost
forced to retain in his paraphrase of Petronius, is an
exception and not a common exception. Sometimes he
is almost vernacular in this respect, like his prede-
cessors above mentioned, but with a more polished and
modern touch, as in this :

What a deal of cold business doth a man spend the better part of
life in ! in scattering compliment, tendering visits, gathering and
venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter love
in a dark corner.

The precise rhythm, here and elsewhere, is more
cunning perhaps l than may appear at first hearing ; but it
is evidently not in the least that symphony of " cornet,
flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of
music " to which we have been listening in the last chapter.
Nor when Ben raises his tone will he attempt this :

If in some things I dissent from others whose wit, ministry, and
diligence and judgment I look up at and admire, let me not there-
fore hear presently of ingratitude and rashness. For I thank those
that have taught me, and will ever : but yet dare not think the scope
of their labour and enquiry was to envy their posterity what they
also could add and find out.

Again, no absence of rhythm and no inferior quality of
it ; but one in no sense trenching on the poetical, and not
even attempting the higher and more ambitious flights
of the orator. A business-like style, entirely free from
the disqualifications of its opposite, if destitute of that
opposite's charms a style (in no belittling sense) of all
work, sometimes almost conversational in a modern way,
and often so according to the way of the time the
practice of the dramatist showing itself.

In such a style we do not expect even the swallow

1 Note the long and comparatively unaccented arrangement of the over-
ture ; and the parallel sticks following and lengthening out as they do.

vii THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 207

flights in gentle soar and stoop, in sweep of longer or shorter
length or circle, that we find in Hooker ; still less the vast
symphonic fugues of Browne or Milton or Taylor ; least
of all the minor devices such, for instance, as that
arrangement of parallel but differently ended clauses so
often noted. Antithesis, balance, parallel these are, as
has been said, the main instruments. Even when the
sentences are long, they are cumulative rather than
periodic.

The way in which the plainer style is, as Scots has it,
" thirled " inevitably bound to and obliged to deal with
this balanced arrangement is excellently illustrated in
the curious and characteristic section Beneficial One
could deny some of its propositions pretty plumply as to
their meaning ; but from whomsoever Ben took the matter,
there is no question as to the idiosyncrasy of the form
both as regards his own character and as regards the
actual style. One thinks of the admirable Greek word
for " kick " (KaKTifyiv) as the scornful, ungracious clauses
with their short staccato motion rank surlily over against
each other. And everywhere in the great show-passages
as to Shakespeare and Bacon, which he certainly did not
take from Quintilian or Seneca ; in the (if you like it)
adaptations from Heinsius on Tragedy and Poetry, in the
thoughts on Education everywhere there is the same
rhythm, never in the least confused or blunted, clumsy or

208 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

blemished ; very seldom (not quite never) yielding to the
master temptation of the time, an inartistic epexegesis.
Hobbes. Jonson's eminence in the other divisions of poetry and
drama, and his almost unsurpassed literary influence, eke
out the somewhat scanty documents, or in the French
heraldic sense "proofs," of his position in prose. Those
of Bacon's other great disciple, Hobbes, need no such
eking. More charming, more magnificent, more succulent
and satisfying and delightful writers of our prose there
certainly are : I doubt whether in his own way, or even
in any way, there is a greater. In his principles, indeed,
as well as in practice, Hobbes might seem likely to yield
us very little. His subjects, even putting aside his rugged
and reveche l classical translations, and his vain and
amateurish mathematical wanderings, are confined to
departments of literature, especially the philosophical and
the political, which, though they have shown themselves
capable of the best styles, have much more commonly
turned out to be patient of the worst. His theory of
the " counter " or " token " word a mere symbol, good
for so much strictly defined, and measured, and numbered
sense might' seem certainly to neglect, and even to no
small extent positively to discourage, ornamentation of
the counters, arrangement of them in cunning patterns
unnecessary to the meaning, and the like. But no man
can wholly avoid the influence of his hour ; and no hour
can help developing whatever kindred idiosyncrasy may
exist in the man it finds. The result is that Hobbes is
not merely one of the clearest and most cogent of
English writers, but that he has also a strange and (v. note
above) as it were cross-grained magnificence about him
austere and gladiatorial, but undoubted and that this
magnificence calls to its aid a rhythm which is a kind of
opposition member of the family of the rhythms of
Browne and Milton themselves, while it is almost equally
suggestive of Hobbes's older contemporaries (for these

1 It is curious that while there is (or was in our better days) so much of
this quality in the English temperament, we should have no word for it
except a compound, "cross-grained," and a vulgarism, "contnzzry."

vii THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 209

others were his younger in age, though not in writing)
such as Donne and even Raleigh.

His style is thus even more than usually connected His eminence
with his thought as well as with his character ; but there ^^ jj.
went another element to its making. Hobbes was notori- acter.
ously a very late writer, or at least publisher ; nothing of
his appeared till he was nearly forty. But there is reason
for thinking that, up to that time at least, if (as he must)
he had written, he had written chiefly in Latin, and he
almost always issued his work like Bacon, but in an
almost greater degree in the older language as well as
in English. To write Latin currently was of course a
main part of a liberal education in the seventeenth
century, especially for persons who dealt with the graver
subjects ; but not even to Milton does it seem to have
come so much by nature as to Hobbes. And his Latin
style, still more than Milton's, owes little or nothing to
the more elegant Latin letters. Hobbes had an even
greater contempt for the schoolmen than any one (at
least any one speaking with knowledge) has had since ;
but, though he extended his scorn to their terminology,
he consciously or unconsciously adopted much of the
aridity of their style. Something of this dryness remains
in the English, but it is atoned for, and even to some
extent removed, by the vigorous sap of native English
phrase, which seems also to have been part of his rugged
but vivid nature. Observe the clear and sheer trenchancy
of this picture in negative of the State of War :

strength I and their own

without other

security

inventions I shall furnish

In such I condition I there is no I place I for

than their own
them | withal.

industry, | because | the fruit thereof | is uncertain ; | and conse-
quently | no culture | of the earth ; | no | navigation | nor use of |
the commodities | that may be I imported I by sea ; j no | com-
modious | building ; | no instruments | of moving | and removing }
such things | as require | much force ; | no knowledge | of the face | of
the earth ; | no account | of time ; | no arts ; | no letters ; | no
society ; | and | which is worst | of all | continual | fear | and the
danger | of violent | death ; | and the life | of man | solitary, [
poor, | nasty, | brutish, | and i short.

210 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Observe, I say, how the crabbed and almost savage
temper of this so true to the facts, so fatal to the fancies
age-long cultivated in the poets and to be recooked into
poisonous messes by the philosophes of the next century
is associated with nothing in the least savage as far as
cultivation of style and even of rhythm goes. The
"mode" of course is austere and nowise florid castigated
and trained down to the least of flesh and the most of muscle,
with no bloom of tint or soft curving outline. But the
ear is by no means neglected, still less outraged ; almost
the only point where logical precision rather injures the
effect is the repetition of the same word " consequent "
instead of using a synonym in the second place. For the
rest, all the clauses and sentences are perfectly well-
balanced : the iron ram-head sways itself to and frorri its
blow with an excellent cadence. Nay, more, in the
fascicle of parallel deprivations which constitutes the
second sentence, there is a singular variety, which may be
unconscious, but cannot be accidental, of length and
quality of composition, longer and shorter kola being
perfectly symphonised ; while when we come to the end

there is a positively artful counter -ordonnance of "arts
letters | society " | rising from monosyllable through
trochee to paeon, and of " solitary ') poor nasty | brutish

and | short," sloping and sinking from paeon through
trochees (" poor " is a virtual trochee and " brutish " an
actual one, while " and " merely completes the equivalent

dactyl) to the single thud of " short."

This same knowledge of the secret which does so
much both for poets and prose writers, the secret of
letting out and pulling in clauses like the slides of a
trombone or the " draws " of a telescope, is exampled, to the
eye as well as to the ear, in one of the two capital places
of that marvellous miniature masterpiece, Human Nature :

The comparison of the life of man to a race, though it hold not
in every part, yet it holdeth so well for this our purpose, that we
may thereby both see and remember almost all the passions

vii THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 211

before mentioned. But this race we must suppose to have no The "Race 1

other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost, and in it : and " Lov '

passages of
To endeavour, is appetite. Human

To be remiss, is sensuality. Nature,

To consider them behind, is glory.

To consider them before, is humility.

To lose ground with looking back, vain glory.

To be holden, hatred.

To turn back, repentance.

To be in breath, hope.

To be weary, despair.

To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation.

To supplant or overthrow, envy.

To resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage.

To break through a sudden stop, anger.

To break through with ease, magnanimity.

To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity.

To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep.

To see another fall, is disposition to laugh.

To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity.

To see one out-go whom we would not, is indignation.

To hold fast by another, is to love.

To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity.

To hurt one's-self for haste is shame.

Continually to be out-gone, is misery.

Continually to out-go the next before, \s felicity.

And to forsake the course, is to die.

It is only necessary to look at this to see the fact ; it is
only necessary to read it aloud to see that if the arrange-
ment of long and short clauses is merely casual, then
Lucretius had a great deal more to say for his atomic
theory and its possibilities than is generally thought,
while even then we shall have to ask whence came the
exiguum clinamen which has devised so definite a mass.
But on the whole the triumph of Hobbes's style is in
that other strange passage of the same masterpiece, the
account of Love, which contrasts still more strongly
with the definition thereof just given :

Of love, by which is to be understood the joy man taketh in the
fruition of any present good, hath been spoken already in the first
section, chapter seven, under which is contained the love men bear
to one another or pleasure they take in one another's company :
and by which nature men are said to be sociable. But there is
another kind of love which the Greeks call "Epws, and is that which
we mean when we say that a man is in love : forasmuch as this

212 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

passion cannot be without diversity of sex, it cannot be denied but
that it participateth of that indefinite love mentioned in the former
section. But there is a great difference betwixt the desire of a man
indefinite and the same desire limited ad hunc : and this is that love
which is the great theme of poets : but, notwithstanding their praises,
it must be defined by the word need : for it is a conception a man
hath of his need of that one person desired. The cause of this
passion is not always nor for the most part beauty, or other quality
in the beloved, unless there be withal hope in the person that loveth :
which may be gathered from this, that in great difference of persons
the greater have often fallen in love with the meaner, but not
contrary. And from hence it is that for the most part they have
much better fortune in love whose hopes are built on something in
their person than those that trust to their expressions and service ;
and they that care less than they that care more : which not per-
ceiving, many men cast away their services as one arrow after another,
till, in the end, together with their hopes, they lose their wits.

We know little or nothing of Hobbes's youth, and it
might seem, not merely from his works generally, but from
most of the anecdotes about him, that he never could
have been young. But that he must, at some time or
other, have been what " we mean when we say that a man
is in love" is quite evident from the last two sentences
of this supremely remarkable passage. Most probably
no " shepherd's hour " ever sounded for him at Malmesbury
or at Magdalen Hall, at Chatsworth or at Paris. Whether
this be so or not, however, the piece is unquestionably set
to a singular under-rhythm, utterly suitable to its subject.
The first sentence l has the clear perspicuity which has
been said to be Hobbes's main characteristic, with a rhythm
accordant plain but not in the least like the dowdy
insignificance which, for instance, Locke would have given
it. It is exposition pure and simple. The second z is
exposition likewise, but the subject becomes more agitat-
ing, the writer feels the agitation, 3 and the rhythm rises

1 "Of love, etc." 2 "But there is, etc."

3 '0 6j]p 5' f/Sewt SetXwj QofieiTo y&p KvO^pav, as Theocritus (er some one
else, for it does not matter) has said in a poem of which Landor and, as I under-
stand, the greatest living Greek scholar of Germany, have spoken disrespect-
fully, but which can afford to pay no attention to their disrespect. For
what Landor said critically never much mattered : it depended on his
mood at the time. And whether the Germans are still as sadly to seek in
the language as they once were, teste an authority still respected, I should not
presume to decide ; but I can certainly say that this German was sadly to
seek in knowledge of poetry when he followed " Mr. Boy thorn."

vii THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 213

and falls a little, as it were fluttering. It strives to
steady itself in scientific fashion with the next, 1 and so
far succeeds as to produce in the fourth 2 and fifth 3
things very remarkable indeed.

These last sentences, and the whole passage, must, of
course, be read with the mind's voice, if not also the
body's, to perceive their beauty ; but, if this be done, I
venture to think that a charm of the very rarest will be
found in them. The style is of extreme simplicity :
" they that care less than they that care more " could not
be simpler but it is noteworthy that this, familiar and
almost conversational in phraseology, and terse in bulk
and shape, is put between two much longer and more
undulating clauses ; that in the last, though nowhere else,
there is a slight figure ; and that the half-resigned despair
the " terror of Cythera " having been mastered, but
the sense of her baleful power remaining, it closes and
crowns the passage with the uncommented doom loss of
wits. Again, to hark back a little, read this once more :

Every time of reading at least I have found it so for
some half century the penetrating but not clangorous
dirge-sound will be heard more clearly ; as also in

Although, as will be seen, the rhythm is of the purest and
severest prose type, little but balance being used to
produce it ; although you cannot get the least scrap of
metrical suggestion out of it ; although the diction is
strictly selected to match ; yet Thomas Hobbes, philoso-
pher of Malmesbury, materialist, positivist, atheist, mis-
anthrope, pedant, what you will, has here beaten out a

1 " But there is a great " (a repetition in itself rather faulty).

2 "The cause." 3 " And from hence. "

214 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

form which, for the expression of unboisterous hopeless-
ness, comes not far short, if short at all, of King's " Tell
me no more," and Cowper's Castaway, the two poems
which have so strangely chosen the same form to express
different modes of despair, in the other harmony.
Clarendon. The faults of Clarendon's style, from the more general
point of view, are almost universally known even to
casual students of the subject, and form one of the
commonplaces of composition-books and literary histories.
It is not only that his sentences are often of such pre-
posterous length that, if you read them as they are
printed, and abstain from giving yourself a full stop in
breath, except where a full stop is present on the
page, you will have at the end to give yourself a
much longer one in order to replenish your all f but
beggared stock. For this, as has been more than once
observed, does not really matter to rhythm ; and it is
equally the case with Mr. Ruskin. It perhaps bodes more
mischief from that point of view, that this length is, to a
large extent and in more ways than one, the result of
sheer carelessness. The slightest alteration usually, not
seldom none at all, save a simple reform of the punctu-
ation, would meet the case. But often also it would not ;
and Clarendon has allowed himself to be drawn into
complicated, and certainly not admirable, anacolutha of
construction. Even this would not be fatal to rhythm, as
we have seen in Milton's case ; nor is it always so
with Clarendon himself. But his object was not the
elaborate prose of Milton or Taylor or Browne. Clarendon
was evidently a born House-of-Commons-man, and the
ease of his oratory is well attested. In so far, moreover,
as he took any patterns, the French memoir- and char-
acter-writers must have been of them ; and these, in
Clarendon's time, were already aiming at, and t6 a great
extent attaining, that simplicity of phrase which is certainly
not characteristic of French prose generally in the fifteenth
and the sixteenth centuries.

The result is that, as in Hobbes' case as indeed
everywhere you must not demand from Clarendon ce qu'il

vii THE CONCURRENCE OF THE PLAIN 215

ria pas but only ce qu'il a. In his case, and despite the
long sentences (which are alternated with quite short
ones), " what he has " is a certain combination of dignity
and ease, which will be found to be not common elsewhere
in his time, and hardly to exist before him. But we should
notice in Clarendon, as in his contemporaries, Walton and
Howell, to whom we are coming, as in Owen Felltham
and other forerunners of the plain style ; as we shall
notice still more in the generation (born in or about 1630)
who followed them, that we are losing something, though
it may be difficult to define that something in terms
which will be generally admitted. It is not rhythm as
such, for although we may come to the loss even of
that prose without rhythm is scarcely prose at all. But
it is rhythm which reduces itself to its lowest terms,
rhythm which does not indeed hamper or impair the
meaning by positive ugliness of sound, which even
supplies it with a convenient vehicle of fairly harmonious
expression, but which neither adds to it, as the greatest
masters of the ornate style do, indefinite and splendid
bonuses of sheer musical delight, nor even sets it, as they
and others less great attempt to do, and often succeed in
doing, to a less lavish and abounding but still additional
accomplishment of prose melody. Balance and anti-
thesis positively assist comprehension (though with the
danger, which we shall see fully illustrated later, of
sometimes giving to nonsense an air of comprehensibility),
so balance and antithesis are admitted. But we discern
few other devices of art.

That this is sometimes unfortunate can hardly be
denied. It looks as if Clarendon had tried to work him-
self into a higher strain in treating the character of King
Charles. He was evidently himself much moved, and he
has achieved moving expression. But there are two
unlucky breakdowns in the passage, both of which are
due, not merely to anti-climax of thought, but to a still
greater anti-climax of expression and arrangement :

And, after all this, when a man might reasonably believe that less
than a universal defection of three nations could not have reduced a

216 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CH. vn

great king to so ugly a fate, it is most certain that in that very hour
when he was thus wickedly murdered in the sight of the sun, he had
as great a share in the hearts and affections of his subjects in general
was as much beloved, esteemed, and longed for by the people in
general of the three nations, as any of his predecessors had ever
been. To conclude, he was the worthiest gentleman, the best master,
the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best
Christian that the age in which he lived produced. And if he were
not the best king, if he were without some parts and qualities which
have made some kings great and happy, no other prince was ever so
unhappy, who was possessed of half his virtues and endowments,
and so much without any kind of vice.

Here there is much that is quite good practically of
the best but the two italicised clauses, which should
have wound up and completed the harmony with burst
of trumpet or dying fall of lyre, are quite wretched things,
blunted gossip-phrase, without selection, appropriateness,
or cadence of any sort. There is no such glaring blot in
the pendant character of Cromwell, but it also does not
aspire above a very ordinary quality of rhythm.

Of some other writers just mentioned, Howell requires
no notice here because his very principle and canon was
a pedestrian familiarity ; but more should perhaps be said,
if only in a note, of Walton, on the formal qualities of
whose style doctors have differed, though hardly any one
who can be called a doctor has denied its charm. 1

1 The plainer parts of the Complete Angler are incomparably sweet and
pleasant narrative-conversation. In the more ambitious, Izaak succumbs to
verse, not indeed constantly decasyllabic, but sometimes that, and sometimes
the favourite octosyllabic of his earlier years. The diction, also, is rather
too definitely poetic :

" Look, under that broad beech-tree I sat down, | when I was last this way
a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly con-
tention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near
to the brow of that primrose hill ; there I sat viewing | the silver streams
glide silently | towards their centre, the tempestuous sea ; | yet sometimes
opposed | by rugged roots, and pebble-stones, | which broke their waves, and
turned them into foam : | and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harm-
less lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported
themselves in the cheerful sun ; and saw others craving comfort from | the
swollen udders of their bleating dams. | As I thus sat, these and other sights
had so fully possessed my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet has
happily expressed it, etc."

INTERCHAPTER II

IN the last (and first) Interchapter, what we had to
survey was entirely, or almost entirely, tentative ; and,
what is more, tentative that for the most part, and almost
entirely, did not know what it was attempting, or even
that it was making any attempt. Chaucer * makes no
apology for his early prose as he does for his verse : it is
true that his prose is by no means very much in need of
any, but consciousness of this is far less likely to have
been the reason of the silence than unconsciousness of the
existence of any standard, such as was felt, in the other
case, to crave or get attainment, or to be, if possible, sur-
passed. Caxton feels vaguely that French is a " fair
language," and that English (at least his English) is not.
Pecock and the translators of the Imitation feel that
English vocabulary needs a great deal of supplementing.
Fisher applies some of the tricks and figures of the
traditional rhetoric to the exornation of the vernacular.
Once Chaucer, whether knowingly or not knowingly,
makes his prose definitely rhythmical, in a wrong direction,
by stuffing or dredging it with blank verse. Once again,
in a major instance Malory certainly, and others in minor
instances probably, adopt a more cunning manipulation
of verse-rhythm, so as to make it genuine but beautiful
prose. Yet this, like the whole character of his master-
piece the one masterpiece of the entire Middle English

1 If anybody says here or elsewhere, "You have said all this before," I
can only allege the novelty of the whole subject. "What is told three
times " is perhaps not necessarily " true," or at least more true, for that ; but
unless the teller is very clumsy, and the hearer preternaturally quick or preter-
naturally slow, it ought to be more clear. I wish to " couple up" the history
as distinctly and in as many different ways as may be legitimately possible.

217

2i8 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

period in prose is, as it were, a blessed accident, a
chance-medley of man and hour, with gracious result.

On the other hand, in the long procession of centuries
earlier, though it is hardly possible to point to any
achieved pattern of prose-rhythm or of prose, not a little
material, and even some method, had been, however un-
consciously, amassed. If we have not been able to work
out, in such detail as was once hoped, that interesting
suggestion 1 as to the influence of Anglo-Saxon verse
upon Middle and Modern English prose, there is fortun-
ately no necessity to abandon it as altogether, or even to
any great degree, a mistake. I believe it to be the fact
that alliteration does play a greater part in our later prose
than it did in our earliest, excluding, of course, prose-verse
or verse-prose like ^Ifric's. I believe that trochaic
rhythm is more conspicuous in modern English prosfe of
the elaborate kind than it is in modern English verse.
And it is certain that what would once have been called
the irregularity what it is better to call the extreme
freedom in correspondence of Anglo-Saxon verse, reflects
itself to some extent in that of the kola of modern English
prose, while balance and parallelism, and what we have
called the telescopic arrangement of clause, certainly
appear in the two, and may bear a relation of inheritance.
Undoubtedly Anglo-Saxon verse and modern English
prose are more like each other than the former is like
modern English verse.

But we must not omit to resume once more the char-
acteristics and achievements of Anglo-Saxon prose itself.
Its extreme earliness, its use for businesslike and for
literary purposes at a time when almost every other
European nation took refuge in Latin, is a very remark-
able point. The early elaboration, so easy-looking, but
by its rarity shown to be so difficult, of a simple narrative
style like that of Apollonius, is another. But the most
remarkable for our purpose is a third, different from these.

This is the early, the abundant, the quite evidently
conscious and deliberate adoption of highly rhythmical
1 V. sup. pp. 10 and n note.

INTERCHAPTER II 219

prose by these our ancestors. It is, of course, easy to say,
as has been sometimes said, that this is mainly or merely
imitation of a tendency of the Latin of the Dark Ages as
we find it in Martianus Capella and Sidonius Apollinaris
and Venantius Fortunatus. There is no need to deny
as indeed there could hardly be any object in denying
a possible indebtedness of suggestion, for all these writers,
and some others like them, were undoubtedly earlier than
our Old English prose-poets, while Martianus was cer-
tainly, and the others were probably, well known to them.
But while these were equally known in other countries,
they did not produce the same effect in other vernaculars ; l
and what is even more important, the whole character of
Old English rhythm is so different from that of Latin
that imitation, beyond mere suggestion, is impossible. As
to the positive artistic value of such work as ^Ifric's
alliterative and counter -stressed prose, opinions may
differ ; but I cannot conceive any sober critic denying
that the presence of such work, and its proportion in a
not very extensive literature, is a phenomenon which must
be taken into consideration, especially when we remember
what later stages of the same language have done in
the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth. I am
quite careless of the reproach of vulgar patriotism when I
say that we have the most glorious ornate prose in
Europe ; I think that I am historically secure when I say
that we have also the earliest. 1

But before these later stages could be reached long
before they actually were the language itself had to go
through processes of disorganisation and reorganisation
which made an elaborate prose for a long time impossible.
In almost the last moments of the life of pure Anglo-
Saxon in the closing passages of the Chronicle far into
the twelfth century the old tongue showed its already-
mentioned grasp of simple, straightforward narration. A

1 The chief competitors that might perhaps be adduced as against the two
propositions above are Irish, Old High German, and Icelandic. But the
last-named does not produce elaborate prose till the twelfth or thirteenth
century ; the Irish dates are extremely uncertain ; and Notker is slightly
junior to JElfric, as well as less advanced.

220 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

fairly full and formed command of Middle English, for
this and other purposes, appears in the interesting group of
" those about " Chaucer, well before the end of the four-
teenth. But between the two we have, as has been shown
in detail, little or nothing, with the Ancren Riwle for excep-
tion, proving this other generalisation. Not merely has the
blend of language itself to be mixed, to ferment, and to
mature, but it is hardly applied in prose save to the most
limited and stereotyped use. The late fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries removed the reproach, but in no very
audacious or successful fashion ; and they have been
sufficiently dealt with.

The test of consciousness, applied to the beginners in
the great Elizabethan school, yields results in two different
ways. With any deliberate intention to improve upon
their predecessors, as with any serious or historically
co-ordinated knowledge of those predecessors, they cannot
be credited. Except in the way of a vague reverence for
Chaucer which one of them, Wilson, pretty certainly did
not share, while we may have grave doubts about its
being shared by Ascham it is but too probable that they
exemplified and exaggerated the deplorable, but perhaps
inevitable, ignorance and contempt of the Renaissance
generally for the older vernaculars. But they redeemed
this by an honest and manly desire and endeavour to
rescue, as they thought, the honour of their mother
tongue by new work, inspired as much as possible by
study of classical models, but not (according to their
famous fad) borrowing from these models to an extent
endangering " bankruptcy." That there may have been
a certain amount of mere mannerliness something like
the mincings of a modest maiden in the days when she
was asked to " sit down to the instrument " in Ascham's
protestations as to writing in English is possible. But
he had been elaborately taught and elaborately exercised
in writing Latin ; he had not been taught or exercised
in writing English.

As soon as he and other persons began to " go and do
it" their sense of difficulty at least of the difficulty of

INTERCHAPTER II 221

doing anything good if it really existed, must have
vanished at once. The Paston Letters had shown, as we
have shown from them, that even two, nay three, genera-
tions earlier, in the most unliterary people's hands or
mouths, the vernacular had quite got out of mere rusticity
or childish babblement. What the unlearned could do,
the learned, so soon as they chose, could do much better ;
and there is certainly no sign of strain or of " translation-
in-the-head " in Toxophilus or in the freer parts of Wilson's
Rhetoric. Moreover, as soon as these learned men began
to write English, they could not but apply to it those
lessons for the cultivation and exornation of style which
existed in the ancient languages. They could not be
content, as Caxton had been (if indeed he was), with a
vague discomfort over the sense that other languages
were " fairer " than English, or, as Ascham was not, with
a pedantic-Pharisaic conclusion that English composi-
tion was, and must be, " mean." It was their business
to make English " fair," to make it cease to be " mean,"
and they were furnished by the ancients themselves with
analyses and praxes of the art of elaboration and beauti-
fication. On one obvious device these ancients, while
admitting its existence and power, had taught them to
look with distrust, and they accordingly denounced " ink-
horn terms." But they were not warned against " figures,"
and they used them ; they found elaborate passages about
rhythm, and though these were excessively difficult of
direct application to English, something similar might be
attained.

On the most obvious, universal, and perennial instru-
ment of this balanced and antithetic arrangement of
clause they could not fail to hit, almost without teachers ;
while the secular and ineradicable tendency of the
language drove them to adopt what the ancients had
used little, because their race-spirit did not drive them to
it alliteration. And before long the influence of Biblical
translation enabled them, as few if any other European
nations were enabled, to substitute for the harder and
more mechanical balance, a subtler and more evasive but

222 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

infinitely more musical parallelism, which permeated the
whole literary language. Immense influence was also
exercised, in a direction running rather contrary to the
principles of the Cambridge school, by the flood of
neologisms which translators, poets, pamphleteers, writers
of all kinds, began to pour into the vocabulary ; and in
the later years of the century, yet before the greatest
literary outburst of its last two decades or fifteen years,
we find at least two authors to whom the rather odious,
but as yet unreplaced, word " stylist " unquestionably
applies. These two Lyly and Hooker opposed to each
other in everything but their obvious attention to style
itself, yet stand side by side at the head of the ever-
increasing procession of craftsmen in English prose.

It is with these two and with their contemporaries
and followers, throwing back a little to the Biblical
translations, which did not, however, exhibit their full
rhythmical magnificence till both Lyly and Hooker were
dead, that the elaborate mode of English prose, only
to be properly analysed by quantification, comes into
existence ; and continues to produce examples of varying,
and for some time ever-increasing, beauty during the best
part of a century. Side by side with it, there goes on
perfecting itself, in a different but parallel way, the plainer
style which aims little or not at all at rhythm, and which,
though susceptible of quantification and foot - division,
presents both less obviously, and sometimes hardly requires
them at all. For the beautiful sentence, as Dionysius
pointed out long ago, depends on minor beauties of
phrase and word and even letter. And these subsidiary
but ever important beauties challenge attention, insist
that you shall pronounce them with the lips and turn
them over with the tongue, if not of your body, of your
mind. Such pronunciation, still more such turning over,
cannot exist without the appreciation of the length and
shortness, the emphasis or slur, the pause or " carry-over "
of the individual syllable ; and the instant that this takes
place, scansion comes irresistibly with it. On the other
hand, the plainer style, where the conveyance of the

INTERCHAPTER II 223

meaning is the thing solely or mainly aimed at, admits
of, in fact prefers, merely logical emphasis the integers
or closely connected groups of sense, not those of sound,
engage the attention. And though at this time the
close-packed nature of the meaning itself, and the evident
sententiousness, preserve an obvious foot-division to some
extent ; we shall find that later, and during the triumph
of plainness in the next period, this division, though never
perhaps actually absent, tends to merge itself into long
and largely slurred sections, rhythmically little remarkable
except at their close.

For the Interchapter dealing with that period remarks
on the minor rhythmical (or arrhythmic} characteristics
of this plainer style will be best reserved. We may here
chiefly confine ourselves to those of the ornate. In the
numerous and wonderful examples of this, which have
been accumulated and analysed in the three preceding
chapters, one thing must be clear to all careful observers,
and that is the Cleopatra-like variety of this style. In
Raleigh and Greville and Donne ; in Taylor and Browne
and Milton ; in others of three generations down to
Glanvill and Thomas Burnet ; nothing is more remark-
able than the absence of those " moulds " which present
themselves in even the finest eighteenth-century style.
If any writer for a time seems to use one he breaks it
soon ; while in the greatest of all, Browne, there seems to
be none at all the inexhaustibly plastic fingers have no
need of the slightest assistance of model, the faintest
suggestion of previously used means and previously
achieved effect. Hardly anywhere, perhaps, is this
unconquerable variety more noticeable than in the actual
parallelisms of the Authorised Version, when you compare
them with balanced pairs or batches in members of the
opposite class so distant from each other in time, subject,
spirit as Ascham and Gibbon, Jonson and Johnson. No
motive is merely repeated, or allowed to remain unfugued :
and yet the whole, however polyphonic, never, in the best
examples, which are not occasional purple patches, but
constantly met with and integral constituents of the

224 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

style, loses symphony. For some reason or other, the
power of appreciating concerted harmonies in articulate
and sense-bearing language, seems to be much rarer than
that of enjoying music proper. Yet it is certain that the
tens who appreciate the close of the Urn Burial, or that
sentence of Glanvill's, receive as keen and as systematic
a pleasure as the tens of thousands who listen to Beethoven
or Bach.

These remarks may perhaps excite though they
have as a matter of fact partly answered it by anticipa-
tion a demand somewhat of the nature of a grumble.
" This," the reader may say, " is all very fine ; but can
you not, after this display of history, and this parade of
quantitative analysis, give us some general rules by which
the fine effects are attained some prose-forms corre-
sponding to the recognised forms of verse, or some laws
answering to those which govern the musical effects to
which you have compared them ? " Alas ! (though to
my own mind there is no need for any regret in the
matter except for disappointed expectations) I cannot ;
and whether anybody will ever be able to do so I very
gravely doubt. In the first place, let me remind the
reader, according to a hint just given, that what apparently
makes the charm of prose rhythm is not Uniformity but
Variety ; and that, as has just been said, this greatest
prose of English has the greatest variety of any prose,
and to all appearance is greatest in other ways just
because of that very fact.

In the second place, let him remember that none of
the great Greek and Roman critics, who as we saw
employed these same methods of analysis, in languages
as indisputably as perhaps ours is only disputably (cer-
tainly disputedly} suited to them, that neither Aristotle
nor Quintilian, neither Cicero nor Longinus, succeeded in
indicating more than certain apparent virtues of certain
feet in certain places, 1 or was able to give us a formula
or prescription for making rhythmical prose, though they

1 For something similar to this (and perhaps a little more) see Appendix
III. On Latin formulae see Appendix II.

INTERCHAPTER II 225

were able, as I think we have been able, to show, in some
cases, how rhythmical prose has actually been made.

Not till that re-examination of the plain style which
has been promised can we perhaps pursue part of this
subject to advantage ; but on other parts something must
be said here. The great ornate prose which we have
examined, in its greatest examples more especially, bears
out most amply that saying of the elders, that " from
prose no rhythm is excluded." It bears out no less the
caution that no rhythm should be too much repeated, or
presented in too absolutely complete a fashion. We have
got in some cases we could probably get in almost all
examples more or less fragmentary, and so instructive
in their fragmentariness, of rhythms or all but metres, as
complicated as those which Quintilian admits, Ionic and
Sotadic and Galliambic as well as still more compli-
cated sodalities, of every foot from pyrrhic to dochmiac,
which possess no congeners in verse. These have been,
in the examples, examined and arranged as best might
be. Opinions may, of course, differ as to the gain of the
proceeding. Opinions may, and perhaps should, differ
more widely still as to the accuracy of its details. But it
has been taken from two points of view which seemed to
the writer to be worth taking. One is that of the pure
historian the governing principle of which is that it is
always profitable to know what did happen, to disengage
the fact from the mere appearance, and, above all, to sift
and riddle out, from the confused crowd of facts, something
not confused and so more stimulating.

The other point is that of the pure aesthetic the
person who prefers not to "like grossly," but to get as
far as may be at the reasons of his liking. He knows
none better that this is not very far, that he will be met
sooner or later, and in this case very particularly sooner,
by the impenetrable and insurmountable wall * on which

1 If you could get over this wall, would you be any better off? I have never
seen any discussion of the most mysterious of mediaeval stories, that of Gauterus
(Wright's Latin Stories, No. L. p. 48, Percy Society, 1842), who sought a
place ubi semper gauderet, et nullam molestiam in carne nee in corde sustineret.
He tried various promising situations, where he was offered a beautiful wife,

226 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

is written, " No farther." The end of all things is baffle-
ment ; but it is good not to be baffled too soon.

These Interchapters are intended to lead up to a
Conclusion, and it would be a mistake to anticipate too
much of what is to be said there, as well as what is
to follow more immediately. But it may at least be
observed that before the stop is reached there is plenty to
be done and enjoyed. The greater passages and, for the
matter of that, the lesser, and all of them can be laid out
in regular partition, where the harp and the psaltery and
the dulcimer, and all kinds of prose music, will be found
to have each, as Pecock says, " his proper-to-him " place
and office. When that partition is mastered, to go over
it will, to the right ears and fingers, give a similar pleasure
to that given by playing and hearing a piece of music
which you have not made for yourself, and which you
could not make for yourself. You may even, though I
think you will never upset the general system, make
independent ^partitions of it.

And, if you have the true historical spirit, you will go
on without grutch or grumble to see what people did
when they lost the secret of this polyphony, or were
weary of the taste of its delight, and tried for something
else.

a great kingdom, a Palace of Delights, etc., but in each case there was an
unpleasant bed, surrounded with ferocious animals, in which he had to sleep.
At last he found an old man sitting at the foot of a high wall, against which
leant a convenient ladder. The old man said that this led to what he wanted.
Ascendens ergo Gauterus quae diu quaesierat invenit. I have always thought
that he probably broke his neck ; though if anybody else thinks this an
uncomfortable ending, our old friends the Deadly Sins, and a hint at the
Trinity for the wall is "three-staged" will provide something more in the
common allegorising way of the Gesta and their likes, and there will be
quies in coelo.

CHAPTER VIII

AUGUSTAN PROSE

The prevailing of the plain style The group of 1630 Distribution
of the chapter Cowley Dryden South Halifax Temple
and his masterpiece The plainest styles, vulgar and not vulgar
The non-vulgarians : L'Estrange and Tom Brown Bunyan
The vulgarians The effect of abbreviations Instances from
Rymer, etc. Defoe Swift The rhythmical character of irony
Addison Hurd's dealings with his rhythm His supposed
"Addisonian termination" His general view of Addison's
" harmony " Specimens of Addison himself Rhythmical
analysis of them Selections of other Queen Anne men
necessary Berkeley Shaftesbury Bolingbroke Letter-
writers and novelists to be shortly dealt with Conyers
Middleton Efforts at variety Adam Smith Interim observa-
tions on this prose Attempts to raise it Johnson : different
views respecting him His relation to Browne Characteristics
of the Johnsonian style Burke : his oratorical ethos His
declared method Early examples Middle Later Examples
and comments Gibbon : his peculiarity Its general effect,
and that of the other reformers The standard Georgian style
Southey.

WE have seen, in the last two chapters, how, between The prevailing
1600 and 1660, a sort of underground, and, as the French t le e pa
would say, sourd, conflict went on between the style or
styles of prose which carried the use of rhythm almost to
its farthest possible, and that or those which, without
entirely disregarding it (for there will hardly be found an
example of any such at this time), did not make it a
chief object, neglected its finer and more elaborate forms,
and used few of its more notable figures and schemes
except balance. The state of things is not very different
from that which prevailed contemporaneously in verse,

227

228 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and its results were also in a way not dissimilar. But
only in a way. For in the verse-case, a deliberate, if
more or less unconscious, change of taste seems to have
been at the bottom of the thing ; people really persuaded
themselves, extraordinary as it may seem to us, that the
stopped couplet was not merely the neatest and most
useful, but the sweetest and the most splendid form of
verse.

In prose, though there must have been something of
the same kind at work, the main motives and influences
were different. People wanted to do different things, and
accordingly used different implements. The famous and
epoch-making passage l of Sprat does not directly touch
on rhythm, and it is not very probable that the future
bishop, the actual versifier and friend of Cowley,
thought directly about it. But elaborate rhythmical
arrangement is quite evidently one of the things which
are not wanted in scientific discussion, and which, if any-
body is in the unfortunate mood to do so, may be
stigmatised as " beautiful deceits."

The group of At any rate it is certain that among the most remark-
able group of prose writers who were all born about
i63O, 2 the contrast which we have discussed and illus-
trated in the last two chapters evolves itself further, or
rather almost ceases to be a contrast, and becomes a
merely one-sided development. Of all the group only
Temple (who by the way was actually the " eldest hand ")
achieves, or appears to have cared to achieve, anything
like elaborate descants in prose. Halifax (whether it
were Halifax or Coventry does not in the very least
matter to us) would almost seem to have gone out of his
way to illustrate the phenomenon we are discussing by
producing a pendant to Milton's splendid passage on
Truth. South, a man of great eloquence and even rather
antique in his use of phrase and figure, expressly belabours

1 History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), p. 1 1 1 sq. It will be found
in Sir Henry Craik's English Prose Selections (London, 1894), iii. 271,
272.

2 Dryden, 1631; Halifax, 1633; Locke, 1632; South, 1634; Temple,
1628 ; Tillotson, 1630.

viii AUGUSTAN PROSE 229

and condemns l the rhythmical splendours of Taylor, and
himself employs hardly anything but a balanced parallelism
of cadence. Tillotson is plainer and more " prosaic " than
any of these ; and as for the two most famous of the
group, Dryden, capable of positive and varied magnificence
in verse, and able to give the stopped couplet a variety of
cadence and temper which it had never attained before,
and has never regained since, sets himself to attain, and
does attain, in prose a manner in rhythm as in all other
ways, now easy, now forcible, now combative, now
playful, admirably suited for narrative, and as admirably
for exposition or argument, but essentially conversational,
and, in virtue of that very quality, expressly eschewing and
almost ostentatiously abjuring the complicated fugue-
solos of the generation of his youth. While 2 Locke,
whatever may be his merits in other ways irrelevant to
us, for almost the first time makes English prose positively
mean in every point of style, and in rhythm most of all.
It had stammered and shown lack of the rudiments ; it
had been incorrect, gaudy, unequal, awkward, dull. But
it had never, in the hands of a man of anything like
Locke's powers, so fulfilled the words of that very intel-
ligent patriarch, Photius, seven centuries before, when he
said that the use of merely straightforward periods brings
style down to flatness and meanness. But we should
illustrate all this : and should perhaps first subdivide the
long period which this chapter will include.

The chapter which is to deal with practically the Distribution of
whole of English prose from 1660 to 1820, cannot in the cha P ter -
any case be a short one ; but the want of apparent
correspondence between the length of the period and the
length of the chapter is not due to contempt. The person
who should despise not merely Dryden, Addison, Berkeley,
Johnson, Burke, and Gibbon, but dozens and scores of

1 Not, it is true, from the definite point of view of rhythm ; which, as has
been said, hardly seems to have been consciously taken by any one, except
perhaps Samuel Woodford.

2 Some people, I know, object to this use of " while." I can only say that
though they may know English grammars, they know very little of English
grammar.

230 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

other " Augustan " or quasi-Augustan writers from Temple
to Southey, would be little better or no better than a fool.
But, in and from the very nature of the case, description
and analysis of the various modes of these authors requires
much less space spent on it. It is true that one of the
writers mentioned, Addison, was made by Hurd the sub-
ject of about the first and, till very recently, almost the
only attempt (except Mason's) to analyse prose rhythm.
But as we shall shortly see, the attempt itself was very
rudimentary ; it came to little or nothing ; and selection
of its subject may unhesitatingly be set down to the two
obvious facts that Addison was the most popular author
of the time, and that Hurd was dealing with him, rather
than to any special suitableness on his part for the
operation. To some extent the general outlines o the
style-history of these hundred and sixty years are reflected
in the special history of prose rhythm. In the easier or
statelier antithesis of all the group above described, except
in the vulgar slovenliness of the degeneration from Rymer
to Mandeville ; in various efforts at reform made by
Addison, Steele, Swift, Berkeley ; in the drab though
decent nullity of the Conyers Middleton phase ; in the
fresh attempts at exaltation by Johnson, Burke, Gibbon ;
and in the stationary state, not even yet wholly obsolete,
of the standard late Georgian style rhythm obeys the
" general orders of the day," though it has altogether lost
its pride of place. But illustration is wanted from indi-
viduals, and that illustration, subject to the caution put
in, shall now be given.

Cowiey. It has been not unusual, and one need not quarrel
over the matter, to discover the first signs of the conver-
sational tone l in Cowley's Essays, none of which was
written very early, but which proceeded from an older
man than the members of the group so often mentioned.
Cowiey does not maintain it as Dryden does, and he may
be said even not to attain it with perfect sureness. The
old long and somewhat broken-backed sentences reappear,

1 I use " tone " here in its proper sense of " sound-effect " as well as in its
applied one of "manner."

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 231

and as in his verse so in his prose, there is an occasional
tendency to the conceited and " metaphysical." But
compare the following with Bacon, Jonson, or even
Burton in their lighter veins, and you will see the
difference ; in fact, the single italicised sentence is enough
to signalise it :

The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as
a wise man has in private : if the one have little leisure to be alone,
the other has less leisure to be in company ; the one has but part of
the affairs of one nation, the other, all the works of God and nature
under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as
that which I hear -very often : that a man does not know how to pass
his time. 'Twould have been but ill spoken by Methusalem, in the
nine hundred sixty-ninth year of his life ; so far it is from us, who
have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part
of any science, to have cause to complain, that we are forced to be
idle for want of work. But this, you'll say, is work only for the
learned, others are not capable either of the employments, or diver-
tisements, that arrive from letters. I know they are not : and
therefore cannot much recommend solitude to a man totally illiterate.
But if any man be so unlearned as to want entertainment of the
little intervals of accidental solitude, which frequently occur in
almost all conditions (except the very meanest of the people, who
have business enough in the necessary provisions for life), it is truly
a great shame, both to his parents and himself; for a very small
portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of our time,
either music, or painting, or designing, or chemistry, or history, or
gardening ; or twenty other things will do it usefully and pleasantly ;
and if he happen to set his affections upon poetry (which I do not
advise him to immoderately), that will overdo it : no wood will be
thick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or
business, which would abstract him from his beloved.

The truth is that, as was noted above, the conver- Dryden.
sational tone excludes anything more than a hint at
elaborate rhythm. A man who talked Taylorian or
Brownese would be an intolerable nuisance ; and though
a certain management of emphasis is permissible and
even desirable in speech, its governing and directing
principle must be meaning only. Even in English,
moreover, though not so much as in some foreign
languages, well-bred conversation exacts considerable
runs of unemphatic and almost unaccented syllables
which can hardly be got into any rhythm, certainly not

232 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

into any rhythm capable of notation in feet. And there-
fore it is that, except very rarely, it would be, though
quite possible, almost superfluous to arrange Dryden's
prose in quantitative rhythm. It obeys Aristotle's
dictum : it is not arrhythmic very much the reverse.
But, except in a very few set pieces like the great Shake-
speare passage, this rhythm is kept down to almost the
minimum, and where it appears it is rarely elaborated
by any device except the usual balance and antithetic
emphasis. I enlisted myself in Dryden's service some
thirty years ago, and I admire his prose almost as much
as his verse. But as Johnson, in his praise of Addison,
points out in regard to that master, Dryden did not
aim at elaborate rhythm in prose, and indeed aimed away
from it : in the very fact of hitting his own mark he f did
not hit the other. So with South, an admirable writer
and a great master of balance ; so with Tillotson. But
Halifax, for the passage above noted, and Temple, for his
whole conception of arrangement, should be more fully
dealt with.

For Dryden the best known and probably the most
carefully prepared passages those on Shakespeare and
Chaucer will do. I have divided the former, but not (as
a whole) the latter. In the Shakespeare the remarkable
variety of the parallel /cwXa should be noticed, and the
skilful placing of the monosyllable " soul," as well as, in a
less degree, " too " and " there," etc. I have indicated
by italics some of the "runs" of slightly quantified syllables,
making six or more in a batch, referred to above :

he looked | inwards,
is everywhere | alike ;

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 233

He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive
nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken
into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and
humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his
age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are
severally distinguished from each other ; and not only in their
inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista
Porta could not have described their natures better than by the
marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their
tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different education,
humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any
other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are dis-
tinguished by their several sorts of gravity ; their discourses are
such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding ; such
as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons
are vicious, and some virtuous ; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer
calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the
low characters is different ; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are
several men, and distinguished from each other as much as the
mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed wife of
Bath. But enough of this ; there is such a variety of game spring-
ing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not
what to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb,
that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great
grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days ; their
general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in
England, though they are called by other names than those | of
monks, | and friars, | and canons, | and lady-abbesses, | and nuns ; *
for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though
everything is altered.

For South the following will do excellently : South.

He came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared
by his writing the nature of things upon their names ; he could view
essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their
respective properties : he could see consequents yet dormant in their
principles, and effects yet unborn, and in the womb of their causes :
his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents, his
conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of pre-

1 Observe one of the lengthenings and shortenings of foot-length so often
noted.

234 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

diction ; till his fall, it was ignorant of nothing but of sin ; or at
least it rested in the notion, without the smart of the experiment.
Could any difficulty have been proposed, the resolution would have
been as early as the proposal ; it could not have had time to settle
into doubt. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his inquiries
was an evprjKa, an evprjKa, the offspring of his brain without the
sweat of his brow. Study was not then a duty, night-watchings
were needless ; the light of reason wanted not the assistance of a
candle. This is the doom of fallen man, to labour in the fire, to
seek truth in pro/undo, to exhaust his time and impair his health, and
perhaps to spin out his days, and himself, into one pitiful, contro-
verted conclusion. There was then no poring, no struggling with
memory, no straining for invention : his faculties were quick and
expedite ; they answered without knocking, they were ready upon
the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their
operations. I confess, it is difficult for us, who date our ignorance
from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities
about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and
imagination to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature
in the time of innocence ; as it is for a peasant bred up in the
obscurities of a cottage, to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours
of a court. But by rating positives by their privatives, and other
arts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports
of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then,
by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness
of the building, by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts,
rarities, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious
pursue, and all admire, are but the reliques of an intellect defaced
with sin and time. We admire it now, only as antiquaries do a
piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those
vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon
it at present. And certainly that must needs have been very
glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely
when old and decrepid, surely was very beautiful when he was
young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens
but the rudiments of Paradise.

The contrasted character noted above may here be
seen in perfection the comparative archaism of some of
the diction, the occasional metaphysicality of the thought,
but, on the other hand, the new polished balance of the
rhythm, which often reaches not merely the usual double
contrast (" the obscurities of a cottage . . . the splendours
of a court "), but the full Johnsonian intricacy of triple-
rowed equivalence :

fAn Aristotle
\and Athens

(was but the rubbish
\but the rudiments

Jof an Adam,
\ of Paradise.

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 235

South, it will be observed, is not afraid of alliteration,
though he does not push it to Lylyan extremes.

These passages deserve plenty of study, but there is Halifax,
more " curiosity," in the modern sense, about the Truth
passage of Halifax :

Our Trimmer adores the Goddess Truth, tho' in all ages she
has been scurvily used, as well as those that worshipped her. 'Tis
of late become such a ruining virtue, that mankind seems to be
agreed to commend and avoid it ; yet the want of practice, which
repeals the other laws, has no influence upon the law of Truth,
because it has root in heaven, and an intrinsic value in itself that
can never be impaired : she shows her greatness in this, that her
enemies, even when they are successful, are ashamed to own it.
Nothing but power full of truth has the prerogative of triumphing,
not only after victories, but in spite of them, and to put conquest
herself out of countenance. She may be kept under and sup-
pressed, but her dignity still remains with her, even when she is
in chains. Falsehood, with all her impudence, has not enough to
speak ill of her before her face ; such majesty she carries about
her, that her most prosperous enemies are fain to whisper their
treason ; all the power upon the earth can never extinguish her ;
she has lived in all ages ; and let the mistaken zeal of prevailing
authority christen any opposition to it with what name they please,
she makes it not only an ugly and an unmannerly, but a dangerous
thing to persist. She has lived very retired indeed, nay, sometimes
so buried, that only some few of the discerning parts of mankind
could have a glimpse of her ; with all that, she has eternity in her,
she knows not how to die, and from the darkest clouds that shade
and cover her, she breaks from time to time with triumph for her
friends, and terror to her enemies.

I have always thought that whoever wrote this must
of a certainty have known the parallel passage in the
Areopagitica (v. sup. p. 170), and may not impossibly
have designed emulation of it. At all events the reader
will find it by no means uninteresting to look back and
compare the two. The writer has even kept to the
loss and damage of an otherwise fine period the pro-
voking Miltonic addition " she shows . . . own it." He
has achieved a really fine piece of rhetorical prose, with a
rhythm sufficient for any Rhetoric that does not approach
the line dividing its own dominions from those of Poetry.
But the musical accompaniment, the concert of the plain
of Dura that has gone utterly ; and nothing remains

236 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

with us but oratorical balance, varied enough and effective
enough, but with no magic about it, only an excellent
cleverness.

Temple and The position of the wonderful sentence which has
been already referred to as giving, of itself, a position, by
himself, to Sir William Temple, is an odd one. There
is nothing else like it in his work, though the longer
passage which has led up to it is itself in part, but in
part only, somehow different from the work of most of
the group, and here and there suggestive, not indeed of
Browne or Taylor, but of Walton. It will probably be
best to give the whole :

; Whether it be that the fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise
of their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal
mixture of the modern languages would not bear it ; certain it is,
that the great heights and excellency both of poetry and music
fell with the Roman learning and empire, and have never since
recovered the admiration and applauses that before attended
them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must be confessed
to be the softest and sweetest, the most general and most innocent
amusements of common time and life. They still find room in
the Courts of Princes, and the cottages of shepherds. They
serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor or idle lives,
and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of
the greatest and the busiest men. And both these effects are of
equal use to human life ; for the mind of man is like the sea,
which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager in a
calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by
gentle gales ; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy
passions and affections. I know very well, that many, who pre-
tend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise
both poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use
or entertainment of serious men. But, whoever find themselves
wholly insensible to these charms, would, I think, do well to keep
their own counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper, and
bringing the goodness of their natures, if not of their understand-
ings, into question ; it may be thought at least an ill sign, if not
an ill constitution, since some of the fathers went so far as to
esteem the love of music a sign of predestination, as a thing
divine, and reserved for the felicities of heaven itself. While this
world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and requests of these
two entertainments will do so too : and happy those that content
themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent ;
and do not trouble the world, or other men, because they cannot
be quiet themselves, though no body hurts them !

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 237

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best,
but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured
a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

A most curious macedoine \ One might be inclined
to pish and pshaw about the fierceness of the Gothic
humours ; about the excellence of the Roman poetry, of
which Sir William did not know very much, and that of
the Roman music, of which he, like everybody else, must
have been almost wholly ignorant. But the opening
sentence is a good one in the modern style, and those that
follow are still better. Nay, when you get to " the mind
of man is like the sea " you half wonder whether this
genteel writer is going somehow to produce something
better than balance, something more exquisite than ease
with dignity. The doubt a wholly agreeable, if still
unsatisfied, doubt continues for the rest of the para-
graph, to change for a moment only, but a moment of
delight, with the brief coda. Here the Muses were
indeed good to Sir William ; perhaps for his somewhat
blundering but well-intentioned championship of the
youth of their immortality. The thing is not in the
ineffable key of Browne or Donne, it has not the
magnificence of Milton or the floriation of Taylor ; but
it has the homeliness and friendliness which are the best
sides of the Augustan period when it has " off-stilted "
a little, combined with something antiker Form sich
nahernd something almost prose- Shakespearian.

1 It will, no doubt, occur to some that, for the last half-dozen or even the
last dozen words, a continuous trochaic scansion, " Keep it | quiet | till it |

falls a | sleep ; and | then the | care is | over," is possible. To my mind and
ear this would spoil the beauty of the passage ; but that may be matter of
taste. What is important is the unquestionable and remarkable difference
which these various foot-scansions make. It is surely impossible, in the face
of such an example, to regard them as mere pedantic trifling.

238 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The plainest

vulgar.

Thenon-

and Tom

You may force part of this into blank-verse rhythm,
but it does not come naturally, and does not in the
least suit with the rest. The actual measure is mostly
iambic (whence the blank-verse suggestion), but legiti-
mately coupling itself up here and there with at least
one paeon and several amphibrachs the two great
specially prose feet. It is not Corinthian at all, but it
is very nearly Attic in the rhetorical order of thought,
certainly Ionic in the architectural. Elsewhere Sir
William, though always agreeable in tone, is not ravishing.
He varies, like the rest of them, between for his narratives
and descriptions of moxas and peach-trees and German
drinking bouts the pure conversational "straightforward
period " redeemed from flatness by ease and good-breeding,
and, for argument and display, the balanced arrangement.

The prophetic character of the qualities which we
have exhibited in this group has been hinted at already,
and should be more fully brought out in the Interchapter
which will follow this : we may now and here best pass to
the succeeding phases as they have been scheduled above.

The Photian nemesis did not take long to show itself.
^ our " naked natural way " does not easily escape the fate
of being also, as Hobbes, who lived nearly long enough
to see the whole transformation scene, had already trans-
lated it in his disillusionising fashion, " poor and brutish."
In the very group itself which we have been discussing,
Locke showed great part of the danger, and was only
saved from showing the whole of it by the gravity of his
subjects, and by the fortunate fact that he had no
propensity to joking. But the general tendency of the
age was different ; and in the last quarter of the century
the vulgarising of English style and English rhythm for
rhythm is like some delicate meats, it taints at once in
corrupt company is flagrant. It is not quite fair,
though it has been done, to charge this on L'Estrange ;
and (though the eighteenth century would sometimes
have done this) nobody is now likely to charge it on
Bunyan. I do not think that whatever Tom Brown's
delinquencies (and they are not inconsiderable) it is fair

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 239

to charge it on Tom who was saved in form by a little
scholarship, as Bentley was not by much. The editor of
the Observator, and the author of the Letters from the
Dead to the Living, use slang and neologism without the
slightest compunction, and though Tom at least was by
no means without a vein of poetry, their subjects did not
invite " high strains " of any kind. But though both,
and especially Tom, can be horribly coarse in substance
and diction, their rhythm is never vulgar : it is purely
conversational, but of a not very polished type. 1

As for Bunyan, here as everywhere, he stands quite by Bunyan.
himself. I think he had read a good deal more than some
persons of worship fancy ; but there is little doubt that
the common idea as to the Bible furnishing him with his
only formal models is correct enough. And by special
genius he had managed to combine Biblical music with
the style of the most ordinary, yet never in the least
vulgar, vernacular after a fashion which seems to me
almost more marvellous than Browne's weaving of the
Biblical magic into his own splendour, or Taylor's decking
texts with his prettiest trills and flourishes. All these,
however, really belong to the group already dealt with as
far as general rhythm goes belong to it, indeed, with a
closeness which the nature of their subjects ought not to
veil, though with many people it probably does.

On another group, however of which the most The vulgarians
prominent members are Rymer the critic, Bentley the
scholar, Jeremy Collier the divine and historian, with
others down to the somewhat later Mandeville, the curse
has come. Its manifestation is partly of a kind which
may seem accidental, if not mechanical ; but Swift, who
was possessed of a tolerably acute intellect, did not think
so. This is the use of colloquial contractions a thing
the destructiveness of which as regards harmony either
in verse or prose is not altogether easy to account

1 To see the difference, let the reader for once descend into the actual
gutter, and read Ned Ward. There is not much, if anything, to choose
between Ned and Tom in decency of matter, but there is everything in
quality of style.

240 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

for, 1 and has been overlooked in the strangest and most
varied fashions, 2 but which certainly exists. Except " 'tis "
(which has secured itself a singular privilegium, perhaps
because of the exceptional ugliness of " it's ") it would be
difficult to mention a single contraction of the class which
is not instantly fatal to verse (think of what " I'm dying,
Egypt," would be in Antony's mouth, and of what the
lower, but really in substance pathetic, " Don't hear me
wronged " of Monimia actually is), and at least excessively
dangerous to prose, unless introduced for a special purpose,
instances What possible harmony or rhythmical effect can you

from Rymer, ^ Qut Qf ^ j efky vu l gar i ty Q f R yme r's " Fancy leaps

and frisks, and away she's gone " ? out of Bentley's " But
it's utterly false that Professors of it lasted longer in
general than those of the others " (where the man shows
his lack of ear, not merely by "it's," but by the*un-
necessary " in general " shoved in to spoil what little
rhythm there is) ? out of Collier's " Can't a toad spit
venom because she's ugly " ? Swift's well-known onslaught
on this kind of thing in the Tatler 3 was no doubt directed
rather at the vocabulary than at the rhythmical effect.
But this latter is really worse than the intrinsic badness
of the language. Nobody bars " it's " and " we're " in
actual conversation, or in that letter-writing which is
merely conversation through the post. But in book-prose
they are seldom (though I'd not say never) in place. As
for Mandeville, his liking for, and practice in, the actual
Dialogue may make it seem rather unfair to say much
of him ; but he certainly belongs to the vulgar class.
Defoe. Yet another isolated and remarkable writer has to be

briefly dealt with before we come to the first group of
reformers Swift himself, Addison, and Steele. Defoe,
however, does not from our present point of view, though
he certainly does from others, stand in any very different
position, now from the least specially rhythmical of the

1 Familiar, and therefore contemnible, if not contemptible, association is
only a part cause. But it is evident that contraction must in any case, and of
necessity, change rhythm.

2 As, for instance, by those who prefer elision to substitution in prosody.

3 No. 230. Sept. 28, 1710.

vni AUGUSTAN PROSE 241

Dryden group, now from the least vulgar of the others.
In his abundant dialogue-work he is less rough than
Mandeville, but hardly more ambitious. When, on the
other hand, he attempts, as in most of his novels, and in
Robinson rather specially, set passages of description or
otherwise, he advances this style, by the aid of balance,
quite after the general fashion.

From the paper above cited, and from other things of Swift.
his, 1 it is quite certain that Swift deliberately meditated a
reform of prose ; and his influence on his friends was so
extraordinarily germinal and protreptic that he may well
be credited with some upon Addison's performance. But
his own protest, as has been said, was mainly, if not
wholly, confined to diction. As to practice, his temper,
his age, and his preferred subjects, necessarily confined
him to a plain style a style in a way the plainest of the
plain. But partly the general tendency of his great
ironic gift, and partly his special genius, brought about a
peculiarity, strictly rhythmical, which, though not quite
absent from some passages of that " Cousin Dryden " to
whom " Cousin Swift " was so ungrateful, is first found
eminently in Swift himself, and has probably been to
some extent imitated from him, directly or indirectly, by
all who have displayed it since.

The essence of irony, when irony itself is in quintes- The rhythmical
sence, is quietness. If the ostensible expression attracts cl } aracter

r of irony.

too much notice to itself by clangour of sound, or by
flamboyance of colour, the inner meaning has no (or at
least less) opportunity to slip its presence into the reader's
mind, and its sting into the enemy's body. Hence it is
almost impossible for the ironist to be too grave, in rhythm
as in all other points. In such passages as the address to
Prince Posterity in The Tale of a Tub, and almost the
whole of the Argument against Abolishing Christianity
and the Modest Proposal, the subjects, and even to some
extent the styles, are widely different. The Address
starts with the roundest mouth ; puts on an apparent
stateliness. The Argument, as befits its theme, has much

1 The Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue, for instance.

242 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of the same quality. The Proposal is wildly burlesque in
substance, and specially homely, though not in the least
vulgar, in phrase. But all of them equally abstain from
the slightest noisiness (we want a better word for tapage)
in cadence as in diction. A well - bred absence of
emphasis distinguishes all. The clauses are neatly but
not obtrusively balanced ; there are none of the sharp
pulls-up, or the variations of final sound, which even
Augustan writers permit themselves, and, in their highest
strains, even seek. The whole glides along in a smooth
and deadly flood, like that of Till in the old rhyme. It
is just the same with the most withering passages of
Gulliver. In prose as in verse (with one memorable and
not demonstrably certain exception) x Swift never raises
his voice. His prose is never, to a sound taste well
cultivated, inharmonious, or monotonous, or mean ; but
there never, in English, has been a prose in which
harmony was secured with so few means taken to secure
it, and monotony avoided with so little apparent effort to
safeguard the avoidance. A single example may suffice :

I profess | to your highness, | in the integrity | of my heart, |
that what | I am going | to say | is literally | true | this minute | I
am writing : what revolutions may happen before it shall be ready
for your perusal, I can by no means warrant : however, I beg you
to accept it as a specimen | of our learning, | our politeness, | and
our wit. | I do therefore affirm, upon the word of a sincere man, that
there is now actually in being a certain poet, called John Dryden,
whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large folio, well
bound, and, if diligent search were made, for aught I know, is yet
to be seen. There is another, called Nahum Tate, who is ready to
make oath, that he has caused many reams of verse to be published,
whereof both himself and his bookseller (if lawfully required) can
still produce authentic copies, and therefore wonders why the world
is pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third, known by
the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, a universal
genius, and most profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer,

1 Not that I myself have the least doubt as to Swift's authorship of the
"Last Judgment" lines, the transmission of which we owe to Chesterfield.
The internal evidence is overwhelming, and while Chesterfield, great as were
his wits, could not possibly have written them himself, he was neither careless,
nor a mystifier, nor ill-informed. But the certainty morally as strong as
possible, and hardly less so critically falls short of both logical and legal
requirements.

viii AUGUSTAN PROSE 243

and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person
styled Dr. Bentley, who has written near a thousand pages of
immense erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain
squabble, of wonderful importance, between himself and a bookseller ;
he is a writer of infinite wit and humour ; no man rallies with a better
grace, and in more sprightly turns. Further, | I avow | to your
highness, | that with these eyes | I have beheld | the person | of
William | Wotton, | B. |D., | who has written | a good | sizeable |
volume | against a friend | of your governor | (from whom, alas ! he
must therefore look for little favour), in a most gentlemanly style,
adorned with the utmost politeness and civility ; replete with dis-
coveries equally valuable for their novelty and use ; and embellished
with traits of wit, so poignant and so apposite, that he is a worthy
yokemate to his forementioned friend.

I have marked a few passages of this only, because it
seemed unnecessary to do more. No reader with any ear
can fail to notice the unostentatious undulation of the
scheme : now rising from dissyllabic or monosyllabic feet
through trisyllabic to paeons or even dochmiacs ; now
reversing the process ; but in no case transcending a sort
of grave oratorical rhythm or a quiet caricature thereof.

The positive achievement of Addison in prose-form Addison.
must in any case have assured him no small place here ;
and his immense and prolonged influence might have
challenged such a place if he had been less intrinsically
good. But even if his deserts from either point of view,
or both, had been very much less, the position (already
more than once glanced at) which he holds, as having been
the first English writer on whose work a commentator
bestowed special attention from the rhythmical point of
view, would have made him all important to us. We
shall, indeed, take this side first, because it is first in its
own division.

Kurd's first note 1 on Addison's rhythm starts with a

1 On Spec. 94. See Bohn edition of Addison, vol. ii. pp. 416, 417. But
I append the passage :

" Which the prophet took a distinct view of.~\ This way of throwing the
preposition to the end of a sentence, is among the peculiarities of Mr.
Addison's manner ; and was derived from his nice ear. The secret deserves
to be explained. The English tongue is naturally grave and majestic. The
rhythm corresponds to the genius of it ; and runs, almost whether we will
or no, into iambics. But the continuity of this solemn measure has an
ill effect where the subject is not of moment. Mr. Addison's delicate ear
made him sensible of this defect in the rhythm of our language, and sug-

244 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Kurd's deal- misconception which, in a man of the Bishop's reading
rhythm' lS an( ^ critical power, 1 shows how very ignorant his genera-
tion was of the history of English language and literature.
Of course, the preposition at the end of the sentence is
no peculiarity of Addison's, but an old and genuinely
English idiom which pedantry has at different times con-
demned, but which no one who really knows his mother
tongue will hesitate to use when he pleases. It has often
recently been pointed out that one of the most curious
differences between the first and the later editions of
Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy is the removal of the
preposition (probably in mistaken deference to French
usage) from the end. But this matters very little
nothing at all, indeed to Kurd's rhythmical criticism.
This, though it shows a creditable application of the
principles of Cicero and Quintilian certainly, and perhaps
of Aristotle and Longinus, to English, is, as was natural,
a little rudimentary.

Hurd is, of course, perfectly right, though not in the

gested to him the proper cure for it ; which was, to break the continued
iambic measure, especially at the end of a sentence, where the weight of it
would be most felt, by a prepositim, or other short word, of no emphasis in
the sense, and without accent, thrown into that part : whence a trochee, being
introduced into the place of an iambus, would give that air of negligence, and
what the French call ' legerete,' which, in a work of gaiety or elegance, is

found so taking. For instance, had the author said, ' of which the prophet

took a distinct view,' the metre had been wholly iambic, or, what is worse,
would have been loaded with a spondee in the last foot, and the accent must
have fallen, with solemnity, on the word '"view.'' But by reserving the
preposition * of to the end of the sentence, he gains this advantage, that
' view of ' becomes a trochee ; and the ear is not only relieved by the variety,
but escapes the ' ictus ' of a too important close. For the same reason, he
frequently terminates a sentence, or a paragraph, by such unpretending

phrases as, of it of him to her from them, etc. ; which have the same
effect on the ear (the accent, here, falling on the preposition), and give a
careless air to the rhythm, exactly suited to the subject and genius of these
little essays : though the common reader, who does not enter into the beauty
of this contrivance, is ready to censure the author, as wanting nerves and force.

" In the formal style, it is evident, this liberty should be sparingly used ;
but in conversation, in letters, in narratives, and, universally, in all the lighter
forms of composition, the Addisonian termination, as we may call it, has an
extreme grace."

1 For a vindication of this from a trick of undervaluing him which repays
his own ignorance in kind, see Hist. Crit. iii. 72-80.

vni AUGUSTAN PROSE 245

least original, in declaring the general rhythm of English His supposed

to . be iambic ; and he is equally right, and rather more |^S|J|f?,

original, in desiderating substitution of other feet, though

one may smile (to be smiled at in return, no doubt, by

others hereafter, if there be a hereafter for this book) at

the " air of taking negligence " given by a single trochee.

But in applying this principle he " sticks in the bark "

remarkably. His " wholly iambic " observation, on his

own scanning, would require an accentuation of " distinct "

which was pretty certainly no more usual in his time than

in ours. Indeed, his horrified suggestion of a spondee

seems to admit this. He gives no reason why accent

should not, or why it must, " fall, with solemnity, on the

word ' view,' " and he clearly never thought of, and

would doubtless have regarded with horror, the scansion

" a distinct | view ," which is pretty certainly the right
one. But he is perfectly right as to the different effects
of iambic and trochaic endings, though, as was noted
above, the assumption that it is an " Addisonian termina-
tion " would seem to argue a beginning of study of
English prose with Addison himself, and an ignoring of
all that had gone before. 1

Hurd's other passage on Addison's rhythm is very His general
much longer ; but, long as it is, it must be given, 2 and Addison's

1 I suspect that, great as was the authority of Dryden's verse in Hurd's
day, the prose was little read.

2 On Spec. 409, ed. cit. sup. iii. 389-391 :

"A man who has any relish for fine writing.] This mystery of fine
writing (more talked of than understood) consists chiefly in three things. I.
In a choice of/?/ terms. 2. In such a construction of them as agrees to the
grammar of the language in which we write. And, 3. In a pleasing order
and arrangement of them. By the first of these qualities, a style becomes
what we call elegant ; by the second, exact ; and, by the third, harmonious.
Each of these qualities may be possessed by itself ; but they must concur, to
form a finished style.

" Mr. Addison was the first, and is still perhaps the only, English writer
in whom these three requisites are found together, in almost an equal degree
of perfection. It is, indeed, one purpose of these cursory notes, to show that,
in some few instances, he has transgressed, or rather neglected, the strict
rules of grammar ; which yet, in general, he observes with more care than
any other of our writers. But, in the choice of his terms (which is the most
essential point of all), and in the numbers of his style, he is almost faultless,
or rather admirable.

" It will not be easy for the reader to comprehend the merit of Mr. Addison's

246 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

commented on with some fulness. It will be observed
that Cicero and Quintilian, rather than the Greeks, are,
as was above suggested, Hurd's guides. Yet he has not

prose, in these three respects, if he has not been conversant in the best
rhetorical writings of the ancients, and especially in those parts of Cicero's
and Quintilian's works which treat of what they call composition. But,
because the harmony of his style is exquisite, and this praise is peculiar to
himself, it may be worth while to consider in what it chiefly consists.

"I. This secret charm of numbers is effected by a certain arrangement of
words in the same sentence ; that is, by putting such words together as read
easily and are pronounced without effort ; while, at the same time, they are
so tempered by different sounds and measures, as to affect the ear with a sense
of variety, as well as sweetness. As, to take the first sentence in the follow-
ing essay : ' Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our
senses. ' If you alter it thus, ' Our sight is the perfectest and most delight-
ful of all our senses,' though the change be only of one word, the difference
is very sensible ; perfectest being a word of difficult pronunciation, and
rendered still harsher by the subsequent word most, which echoes to the
termination est.

" Or, again, read thus ' Our sight is the most perfect and most pleasing
of all our senses.' Here, the predominance of the vowel e, and the allitera-
tion of the two adjectives, perfect and pleasing, with the repetition of the
superlative sign ' most,' occasions too great a sameness or similarity of sound
in the constituent parts of this sentence.

"Lastly, read thus 'Our sight is the most complete and most delightful
sense we have.'' But then you hurt the measure or quantity, which, in our
language, is determined by the accent ; as will appear from observing of
what feet either sentence consists.

"'Our sight-is the most-complete-and most-delight-ful sense-we have.'
Here, except the second foot, which is an anapaest, the rest are all of one

kind, i.e. iambics. Read now with Mr. Addison ' Our sight-is the most-

perfect-and most delight-ful of all-our senses.' And you see how the rhythm
is varied by the intermixture of other feet, besides that the short redundant

syllable, ses, gives to the close a slight and negligent air, which has a better
effect, in this place, than the proper iambic foot.

"2. A sentence may be of a considerable length : and then the rhythm
arises from such a composition, as breaks the whole into different parts ; and
consults at the same time the melodious flow of each. As in the second
period of the same paper ' It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas,
converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest
in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.'

" A single sentence should rarely consist of more than three members, and
the rhythm is most complete when these rise upon and exceed each other in
length and fulness of sound, till the whole is rounded by a free and measured
close. In this view, the rhythm of the sentence here quoted might be improved
by shortening the first member, or lengthening the second, as thus ' it fills
the mind with the most ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest
distance,' etc. Or thus ' it fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas,
has the advantage of conversing with its objects at the greatest distance,' etc.

"These alterations are suggested only to explain my meaning, and not to
intimate that there is any fault in the sentence, as it now stands. It is not

vni AUGUSTAN PROSE 247

quite assimilated even his Latin lessons, and he has not
dared to make the very smallest advance upon them. He
does here admit an anapaest, but l he does not dream of

necessary, nay it would be wrong, to tune every period into the completest
harmony : I would only signify to the reader, what that arrangement of a
complicated period is, in which the harmony is most complete. We have
numberless instances in Mr. Addison's writings ; as in the next of his papers
on the imagination ' the eye has room to range abroad, to expatiate at
large on the immensity of its views, and to lose itself amidst the variety of
objects that offer themselves to its observation.'

" The instance here given is liable to no objection. But there is danger, no
doubt, lest this attention to rhythm should betray the writer, insensibly, into
some degree of languor and redundancy in his expression. And it cannot be
denied, that Mr. Addison himself has sometimes fallen into this trap. But
the general rule holds, nevertheless ; and care is only to be taken, that in
aiming at a beauty of one kind, we do not overlook another of equal, or, as
in this case, of greater importance.

" What has been said may enable the reader to collect the rule in shorter
sentences, or in sentences otherwise constructed.

" 3. The rhythm of several sentences combined together into one paragraph
is produced, in like manner, by providing that the several sentences shall
differ from each other in the number of component parts, or in the extent of
them, if the number be the same, or in the run and construction of the parts,
where they are of the like extent. The same care must also be taken to
close the paragraph, as the complex sentence, with a gracious and flowing
termination. Consider the -whole first paragraph of the paper we have now
before us, and you will not find two sentences corresponding to each other in
all respects. Each is varied from the rest ; and the conclusion fills the ear,
as well as completes the sense.

" Something like the same attention must be had in disposing the several
paragraphs of the same paper, as in arranging the several periods of the same
paragraph.

"But, 'verbum sapienti.' The charm of Mr. Addison's prose consists
very much in the dexterous application of these rules, or rather, in consulting
his ear, which led him instinctively to the practice from which these rules are
drawn.

" If it be asked, whether the harmony of his prose be capable of improve-
ment, I think we may say in general, that, with regard to this way of writing,
in short essays to which Mr. Addison's style is adapted, and for which it was
formed, it is not. There is, with the utmost melody, all the -variety of com-
position (which answers to what we call pause in good poetry) which the
nature of these writings demands. In works of another length and texture,
the harmony would be improved in various ways ; and even by the very
transgression of these rules.

" Every kind of writing has a style of its own ; and a good ear formed on
the several principles of numerous composition will easily direct how, and
in what manner, to suit the rhythm to the subject and the occasion. There
is no doubt that what is exquisite in one mode of writing would be finical
in another. It is enough to say, that the rhythm of these essays, called
Spectators, is wonderfully pleasing, and perhaps perfect in its kind."

1 And he is hardly to be blamed for this, for much more than a century
was to pass, and the enfranchisement of poetry and prose alike had to take
place, before it was (quite recently) recognised.

248 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

the monosyllabic foot, which is the complement of ana-
paestic division. And his classical guides have not in the
least suggested to him (as here they ought to have done)
the necessity, or at any rate the great advantage, of the
paeon. He clings to his iamb ; and the result is that,
flying directly in the face of those very advisers, he does
not, indeed, make Addison write blank verse, but attributes
(without special objection) to one of his specimens, a
blank-verse arrangement which it need not in the least
undergo. His " negligent redundance " would be much
better interpreted as a deliberate and very skilful amphi-
brach ; and the whole would be best scanned as iamb,
dochmiac, dochmiac, iamb, amphibrach. 1

This, however, may be put aside as a question of taste.
There is a great deal of uncontroversial matter in ( the
note, for which Hurd deserves hearty commendation, and
which shows acute and original sense joined to a good
knowledge of the ancients. He has mastered the great
principle of variety in clause, sentence, and paragraph, in
composition and termination. He is perhaps, if not
wrong, dangerous in specially suggesting rising amplifica-
tion of members ; for though this is sometimes (as has been
and will be shown here) effective, it is tricky and mono-
tonous, and very liable, as in Johnson, to pall. But on
the whole he is a pioneer, 2 and a good pioneer ; and so
all honour be to him.

Specimens of What is more, he not only gives us invaluable in-
formation as to the standpoint and outlook of his own
day on these matters, but positively adds interest to the
study of Addison's rhythm from points and manners of
view quite different. We turn to the Spectator itself, and
what do we find there ? As Mr. Courthope has most
truly observed, 3 though he has not quite followed out the
observation in our direction, Addison's style" is " an
extension of that of Dryden " in other words, purely con-

1 " Our sight | is the most perfect | and most delightful | of all | our

senses. | "

2 See on Mason, post, App. II.

3 Craik's English Prose Selections, iii. 489.

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 249

versational ; in rhythm, as in other things, with little
harmonic device except balance, but further modernised,
and, it may be, with more definite attention to niceties of
cadence. Let us accumulate some well-known passages
the more well-known the better and analyse them.

Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate ; our tables
are stored with spices, and oils, and wines : our rooms are filled
with pyramids of china, and adorned with the workmanship of
Japan : our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest
corners of the earth : we repair our bodies by the drugs of America,
and repose ourselves under Indian canopies. My friend Sir Andrew
calls the vineyards of France our gardens ; the spice-islands our
hot-beds ; the Persians our silk-weavers, and the Chinese our potters.
Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life, but
traffic gives us greater variety of what is useful, and at the same
time supplies us with everything that is convenient and ornamental.
Nor is it the least part of this our happiness, that whilst we enjoy
the remotest products of the north and south, we are free from those
extremities of weather which give them birth ; that our eyes are
refreshed with the green fields of Britain, at the same time that our
palates are feasted with fruits that rise between the tropics.

Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her
blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to
this mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives
of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence
upon one another, and be united together by their common interest.
Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food
often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of
Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes : the infusion
of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The
Philippic Islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single
dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred
climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different
ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the
tippet from beneath the pole. The brocade Petticoat rises out of
the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of
Indostan.

MR. SPECTATOR Now, Sir, the thing is this ; Mr. Shapely is
the prettiest gentleman about town. He is very tall, but not too
tall neither. He dances like an angel. His mouth is made I do
not know how ; but it is the prettiest that I ever saw in my life.
He is always laughing, for he has an infinite deal of wit. If you
did but see how he rolls his stockings ! He has a thousand pretty
fancies ; and I am sure, if you saw him, you would like him. He
is a very good scholar, and can talk Latin as fast as English. I

250 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

wish you could but see him dance ! Now, you must understand,
poor Mr. Shapely has no estate ; but how can he help that, you
know ? and yet my friends are so unreasonable as to be always
teasing me about him because he has no estate ; but I am sure he
has that that is better than an estate ; for he is a good-natured,
ingenious, modest, tall, well-bred, handsome man ; and I am obliged
to him for his civilities ever since I saw him. I forgot to tell you
that he has black eyes, and looks upon me now and then as if he
had tears in them. And yet my friends are so unreasonable that
they would have me be uncivil to him. I have a good portion which
they cannot hinder me of, and shall be fourteen on the 2gth day of
August next, and am therefore willing to settle in the world, as soon
as I can, and so is Mr. Shapely. But everybody I advise with here
is poor Mr. Shapely's enemy. I desire, therefore, you will give me
your advice, for I know you are a wise man ; and if you advise me
well I am resolved to follow it. I heartily wish you could see him
dance ; and am, Sir, Your most obedient servant, B. D.

He loves your Spectators mightily.

. . . . . ,

He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing
me on the top of it, cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me
what thou seest. I see, said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide
of water rolling through it. The valley that thou seest, said he, is
the vale of misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of
the great tide of eternity. What is the reason, said I, that the tide
I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a
thick mist at the other ? What thou seest, said he, is that portion
of eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and reach-
ing from the beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine
now, said he, this sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends,
and tell me what thou discoverest in it. I see a bridge, said I,
standing in the midst of the tide. The bridge thou seest, said he,
is human life, consider it attentively. Upon a more leisurely survey of
it, I found that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with
several broken arches, which, added to those that were entire, made
up the number about an hundred. As I was counting the arches,
the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand
arches ; but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the
bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it : but tell me further,
said he, what thou discoverest on it. I see multitudes of people
passing over it, said I, and a black cloud hanging on each end of
it. As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers
dropping through the bridge, into the great tide that flowed under-
neath it ; and upon further examination, perceived there were in-
numerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the
passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the
tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pit-falls were set
very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that the throngs of

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 251

people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell
into them. They drew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied
and lay closer together towards the end of the arches that were entire.

quickly | follow : | when I see
posed them, | when I consider

These passages differ from each other almost as much Rhythmical
in what we may call atmosphere of subject as in subject as
itself; yet the atmosphere of rhythmical treatment is
surprisingly uniform. The ease, the fluency, the con-
cinnity, is everywhere ; but perhaps there is everywhere
also that almost obstinately " middle " quality upon which
Johnson insisted. Nothing ever jars ; and in such a
passage, for instance, as the delightful malice of poor
" B. D.'s " letter (which has no parallel anywhere except in
Miss Austen) there is nothing wanting. In fact, here the
conversational, almost or altogether, becomes the dramatic ;
and you hear " B. D." sighing in a really pathetic
fashion, " I wish you could see him dance," and still more
pathetically faltering as she tells of tears in Mr. Shapely's
black eyes. But this is suggested delivery rather than
pure rhythm of reading. So again in the beautiful and
famous " Westminster Abbey " passage, it is only the
thought that is very eloquent : the accompaniment is
little more than a usually careful and prolonged example
of balance, and of that extension of clause, like a flight of
steps expanding upwards or downwards, which has been
so often noted. In fact, it may be questioned whether
the actual conclusion " on the . . . mankind " is very
happy in its rhythmical composition. But the piece is,
in that respect, the most ambitious of the four ; and so I
have at least divided it.

252 A HISTOR Y OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Selections of
other Queen
Anne men
necessary.

Berkeley.

On the other hand, in the vivid and almost Macaulayish
reflections on the Exchange, and even in the most serious
and ambitious part of the "Vision of Mirza," we cannot
but feel, good as both are, what a falling off there is from
Sir Thomas Browne, who, be it remembered, did not die
till Addison was already a schoolboy. Think how Sir
Thomas would have lengthened out the sharp staccato
phrases, about Timbuctoo, Barbadoes, and the Philippines,
with erudite or metaphysical conceits couched in long-
drawn symphonies ! how the " Vision " would have decked
itself with all the colours, and bidden its arches play with
all the fugues and toccatas, of Urn Btirial and the Garden
of Cyrus \ Far be it from me, now or at any time, to
commit the unscholarly and Philistine error and ineptitude
of rinding fault with a thing because it is not something
else. If I contrast the meditations of Addison perhaps
more appropriate to the stately tombs or cenotaphs of
the basilica on Ludgate Hill than to those of the older
fane on the Isle of Thorney with the remarks of Browne
on the rude urns brought to light in a Norfolk field, it is
not to scout the one and flatter the other, but simply to
emphasise the difference between them, and to point out
the limitations of the later style. It neither aims at, nor
does it admit of, the gorgeousness of its predecessor ;
mainly, or at least partly, because it does not aim at or
admit of that predecessor's variety of rhythm.

In the respect with which alone we have to do, Steele
is merely a more careless Addison, and Arbuthnot, in
this as in others, is almost inseparable from Swift.
Atterbury is slightly older-fashioned than the others, and
nearer the Dryden group. But three of the greater
Queen Anne men, Berkeley, Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke,
must be noticed in some little detail ; and these three
differ from each other in the most curious fashion.

Berkeley, I confess, appears to me to have been
almost the greatest writer, from our own and the nearest
adjacent points of view, whom the new style post 1660 had
yet produced greater than Addison, if not so variously
agreeable, and though not so great as Dryden, possessing

viir AUGUSTAN PROSE 253

the advantage that, as he only used one harmony (for his
few verses are negligible in form) he was able to pour his
whole strength into it.

He is not, of course, flamboyant ; his time would not
let him be ; but read this :

A very careless reader may say, " Good enough in the
plain-style way ; but what is there in it to justify the
encomium just passed ? " I had at first neither divided
nor scanned anything in the passage itself, and though I
have changed my mind, it cannot be difficult for any one
to disregard the symbols and observe for himself how
much above the " stop " system of clauses in the same
sentence is the sentence-division and arrangement in the
first three full-stop spaces here. See, reading it carefully,
how much spring and swell of cadence there is everywhere,
and especially note that remarkable inset " the children of
imagination j grafted | upon sense " with the change and
idiosyncrasy of its harmony suiting the almost poetic
figure expressed in it.

Berkeley can apply this silver-gilt, if not actually
golden, style, not merely to the austerities of philosophy

254 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and theology, but, as in Aldphron and the Siris, to much
more miscellaneous subjects. I had the good luck to
stumble upon the two last-named books when I was
quite a boy ; and I think they first gave me the idea of
beautiful prose as such. But the abstruser treatises x are
not less distinguished by it : I think they are even more
so. There is hardly any writer (I may be allowed to
repeat the exceptions of Plato and Malebranche, while I
should not feel disinclined now to add Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche) who shows better how perfectly idle is the
notion (entertained by some ancients, and a great many
moderns to the present day, and formulated apologetically
by Kurd in the passage quoted above) that attention to
rhythm will betray the writer into " languor and redundancy
of expression," or, one may add, that attention to it on the
part of the reader means indifference to the meaning, or
failure to appreciate it. And Berkeley, while he can be
almost as mellifluous as Hooker with greater variety, can
be as pungent as Swift, adapting his rhythm to pungency
in a way which Swift hardly cared to use ; as here

where the molossus or, if still greater emphasis is wanted,
the trebly repeated monosyllabic foot at the end, clenches
the defiance 2 of the precedent groups of lighter syllables
in the most charming way.

Shaftesbury. That there should be strong differences of opinion as
to Shaftesbury as a thinker is not surprising ; nor,
perhaps, is surprise exactly the word for the way in
which one discovers similar differences about his style.
Mr. E. K. Chambers 3 thinks it " consummately easy and
lucid," holds (this itself is rather surprising considering
dates) that he " brings into English prose an order and
clearness of which it was beginning to stand in need," 4

1 The above is from The Principles of Human Knowledge.

2 The phrase, it may be just desirable to say, is from the grave burlesque
of the " private-vices-public-benefits " argument in Aldphron.

3 In the section on Shaftesbury in Sir Henry Craik's book, iii. 448.

4 The italics are mine. Shaftesbury is not known to 'have written (or

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 255

but admits that he is " terribly affected." Lamb, we all
know, thought him " genteel." But the author of the
Philosophy of Rhetoric^ one of the very best critics of style
in the eighteenth century, and very far indeed from being
negligible to-day, made out his lordship, in a most
vigorous and unsparing examination, 1 to be, " though far
from deficient in acuteness, invention, or vivacity,"
" perhaps the most eminent of all that have written in the
English language" for "galimatias" "bombast," and "the
sublime of nonsense."

One is bound to say that the examples which Campbell
produces prove his own point to the hilt, and show, from
ours, that Shaftesbury could at any rate be guilty of the
clumsiest lumps of inharmonious composition :

If the savour of things lies cross to honesty, if the fancy be
florid and the appetite high towards the subaltern beauties and
lower order of worldly symmetries and proportions, the conduct will
infallibly turn this latter way. Characteristics, III. ii. 2.

But what can one do ? or how dispense with these darker
disquisitions or moonlight voyages, when we have to deal with a
sort of moon-blind wits who, though very acute and able in their
kind, may be said to renounce daylight, and extinguish in a manner
the bright visible outward world, by allowing us to know nothing
beside what we can prove by strict and formal demonstration.
Ibid. III. iv. 2.

The last sentence, particularly, is as formless a heap
as can be found in mid-seventeenth century, without any
of the rhythmical beauty of parts which so often redeems
the prose of that time.

Of course Shaftesbury is not always as bad as this ;
but it must be confessed that he is seldom successful in
turning out a harmonious sentence, as may be seen from
the very first paragraph of his which Mr. Chambers
himself has extracted :

Thus, my Lord, there are many panics in mankind, besides
merely that of fear. And thus is religion also panic, when

at least published) anything before 1708, and had been born in 1671.
Dryden and the minor apostles of "order and clearness" had been born,
and had written, forty years before him.

1 Philosophy of Rhetoric, Book ii., chap, vi., part ii. To be found at
p. 247 of Tegg's edition (London, 1850).

256 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

enthusiasm of any kind gets up, as oft, on melancholy occasions
it will; for vapours naturally rise, and in bad times especially,
when the spirits of men are low, as either in public calamities,
or during the unwholesomeness of air or diet, or when convulsions
happen in nature, storms, earthquakes, or other amazing prodigies :
at this season the panic must needs run high, and the magistrate
of necessity give way to it. For, to apply a serious remedy, and
bring the sword, or fasces, as a cure, must make the case more
melancholy, and increase the very cause of the distemper. To
forbid men's natural fears, and to endeavour the overpowering
them by other fears, must needs be a most unnatural method. The
magistrate, if he be any artist, should have a gentler hand, and
instead of caustics, incisions, and amputations, should be using the
softest balms, and, with a kind sympathy, entering into the concern
of the people, and taking, as it were, their passion upon him, should,
when he has soothed and satisfied it, endeavour, by cheerful ways,
to divert and heal it.

It can only be by accident if a writer of such a
sentence as that italicised here achieves anywhere even a
sentence, much more a paragraph, of any rhythmical
beauty, and I think we need not further ransack the
Characteristics in search of one. The fact is that Shaftes-
bury, despite his gentility, really belongs as a writer to
the disorderly house, against which Swift, Addison, and
their followers were contemporaneously protesting. His
well-known dislike of Dryden may be, as some have said,
excused on the score of filial piety ; but his own
composition is generally " an unfeathered thing " (if not
even an " unfooted"} and not unfrequently "a shapeless
lump."

Boiiugbroke. There has, of course, been much more controversy
about the other " sophist of quality " (as his contempor-
aries might have called, and perhaps did call him) about
Bolingbroke. But whether he was a " brilliant knave "
or " a much misunderstood politician " ; a traitor or a
patriot, an atheist in subterfuge or merely a rationalist
in not the worst sense of the term, there can, I
think, be little dispute between competent persons on the
proposition that he was an uncommonly good writer.
Hardly any one of the group of which we are now
speaking, except Berkeley, seems to me to have excelled
him in faultlessness of form ; for Addison, much more

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 257

agreeable, and, at his best, superior in most other ways, is
also much more unequal in this respect. If few people
" now read Bolingbroke " except to write books on him,
it is chiefly because his subjects have lost interest ; perhaps
also (I should hardly deny it) because the charges of
hollowness, and of a certain monotony in excellence, are
true. Except Halifax, he is our first known example
of the fact that a very great orator practically must be
a good writer. 1 But he is also an example, as (I should
say, though some would not) Cicero himself is, that a
very good orator may be a rather tiresome writer. 2
Bolingbroke's ineluctable adequacy does become something
wearisome ; but it exists. You never " catch him out."
From the Letter to Wmd/iam (which is, I suppose, his diploma
piece), through his " occasional " writings, his Dissertations,
and his Letters and his Essays, through the Patriot King
and the Pope and Pouilly epistles, and the Historical
Remarks, down to those " Fragments or Minutes " as
to which he does admit correction, but which, if they
were not castigated with all the author's skill and
pains, are the most remarkable " jottings " ever written
you never catch him out. My friend Sir Henry
Craik has called him a " journalist " ; and I followed
that way of life myself too long to think the appella-
tion necessarily a reproach. But if so, he was one of
the first of journalists in more than one sense of the
ordinal.

And a certain kind of rhythm was one of the chief
weapons which made him so formidable and so resourceful
in his own kind of journalism. Read this passage, taken
almost at haphazard from the Windham letter :

His religion is not founded on the love of virtue and the
detestation of vice, on a sense of that obedience which is due to the

1 The chief exception usually made is Mr. Gladstone. Of this oratorical
style another example is " Junius." His exaggeration of it brought him most
of his undeserved praise ; and it has doubtless been a main cause of his well-
deserved oblivion.

2 I do not blush to confess that my own copy of his complete Works
(8 vols., London, 1809) is largely uncut. I had read him before I bought
it ; and I have only cared to read him again in parts.

258 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

will of the Supreme Being, 1 and a sense of the obligations which
creatures formed to live in a mutual dependence on one another lie
under. The spring of his whole conduct is fear : fear of the
horns of the Devil and of the flames of Hell. He has been taught
to believe that nothing but a blind submission to the Church of
Rome, and a strict adherence to all the terms of that communion,
can save him from these dangers. He has all the superstition of a
Capuchin ; but I found on him no tincture of the religion of a prince.
Do not imagine that I loose the reins of my imagination, or that I
write what my resentments dictate : I tell you simply my opinion. I
have heard the same description of his character made by those who
know him best ; and I conversed with very few among the Roman
Catholics themselves who did not think him too much a Papist.

Now I certainly am not bribed by any agreement
with the animus of this character of "James III.," inas-
much as I am a Tory of Tories now, and should have
been a Jacobite of Jacobites then. But how artistepient
complet it is in its combination of the finish and fineness
of the rapier with the smashing effect of the bludgeon !
the mixture of short and long sentences ; the scaffolding 2
of the longer ones ; the unerring, yet unmechanical,
use of balance, cumulation, parallelism ! The little

sentence coming after a long one " The spring of | his

whole conduct | is fear ' amphibrach, antispast or third
paeon, and iamb, with the emphasised and contemptuous

"fear" making almost another amphibrach (is fee-ar) is
like the advance and retreat, to gain momentum and final
impetus, of a battering-ram. And the whole run of the
various sentences shows equal mastery. It is unnecessary
to multiply instances ; but this has only the advantage
over hundreds that might be given of that personal
animus, fair or unfair, which gives so much life to speech
and style.

It is, of course, improbable that many if indeed it be
possible that any careful readers should miss the
oratorical tone which, even in this comparatively familiar

1 " Que tu m'emt&es avec ton Etre supreme!" And, indeed, he was
almost the father of all such as use that abstraction or evasion.

2 I had used the word without thinking of its double meaning, but the
passage is almost a spiritual guillotine for the poor Chevalier.

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 259

passage, Bolingbroke suggests, and which, in his more
rhetorical writings, is still more prominent. I shall
endeavour, in the Interchapter, to show more minutely
what rhythmical characteristics this oratorical tone carries
with it ; but it will hardly be contested that in various
forms, from the conversational to the conciliatory, whether
the latter be of the concio ad vulgus or of the concio ad
clerum> it pervades the whole century from Addison to
Mackintosh. This necessarily impresses a considerable
sameness upon the results, and dispenses the historian
from giving very numerous examples of them. There
are indeed whole classes of authors, distinguished, and
even highly distinguished, in other ways, who, for reasons
which may be shortly presented, hardly come in here at
all. The most important of these are the letter-writers
and the novelists.

It is evident that the epistoler steps out of his proper Letter-writers
course, and is deliberately aiming at publication, if he ^^shortiy
puts into his letters anything but the movement of un- dealt with,
affected conversation. Gray may do it, because he has a
certain ineradicable artificiality ; * just as, long afterwards,
Shelley may, because his soul is a harmony and its utter-
ances cannot but be harmonious. Lady Mary has a
good deal of the formal, balanced, semi-oratorical cadence
of the time ; but this chiefly appears in her earliest letters,
where the Master of Peterhouse is doubtless right in
setting it down to "juvenile affectation," or in her very
latest, which have been sometimes suspected of " literary "
contamination. Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, though
the intention of the first was certainly didactic, and the
mood of the second was never quite free from pose, no
more aim at " fine writing " in our sense than does
Cowper.

On the other hand, the novelist, in parts of his work at
any rate, is perfectly at liberty to indulge in the most
elaborate prose ; arid we shall or should be able to draw
striking examples of it from the great novelists of the

1 I use the word in no bad sense ; and any one, if he likes, may substitute
" classicality " or whatever complimentary synonym pleases him.

260 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

mid-nineteenth century. But their forerunners at this
time had quite enough to do to use the new familiar style
which had been provided for them by Dryden, Addison,
and Swift, to think of fioriture or flamboyance. Fielding,
indeed, in the ironical and other parabases which diversify
his work, writes somewhat ambitiously, but hardly attempts
any rhythmical device save a generally oratorical balance ;
Richardson is too clumsy ; Smollett, where he affects
ceremony, is as the other formal scribes of his time ; and
Sterne's deliberate and constant use of mechanical means,
to enforce such emphasis as he aims at, puts him practi-
cally out of court with us. Goldsmith's much and justly
praised quality of style depends in no respect upon
elaborate rhythmical cadence.

It will therefore probably be best to content ourselves
with taking Conyers Middleton' as an example of the earlier
Augustan or post-Augustan style, handled not as Berkeley
handled it ; glancing next at Hume and Robertson and
" Junius," and taking something more than a glance at
Adam Smith; dealing more thoroughly with the three great
agents in raising this style Johnson, Burke, and Gibbon,
and finally exemplifying the " standard Georgian " style
of the latest eighteenth and the earlier nineteenth century.
Conyers We have, of course, nothing to do with the question

Middleton. of c onyers Middleton's honesty or orthodoxy indeed it
has become so common for Canons, Professors, Deans (if
not also Bishops) to take, as De Quincey, when it was
not so common, said, " large quarterly cheques from an
institution of which they have become enemies," that, on
the method of compurgation, he would probably be
acquitted. Nor have we much, though a little, more to
do with his general style. That Parr, who attacked his
plagiarisms so fiercely, should have put him next to
Addison as a writer, goes for very little. Parr's claims as
a literary critic, at least in English, are non-existent ;
and, being quite as acrid and quite as unscrupulous a
controversialist as Middleton himself, he doubtless knew
the value of throwing up a general attack by a particular
acknowledgment. On the other hand, De Quincey,

vni AUGUSTAN PROSE 261

Middleton's chief later assailant, had both general and
particular prejudices against his form as well as his
matter.

For myself, though I am quite " on the other side of
the way " to him in matters theological, I am by no
means sure that Middleton was a scoundrel ; and though
I could not put him in the same class (even if he were at
the bottom and the other at the top) with Addison, I do
not think he was a bad writer. But from our special
point of view he certainly shows the dangers of Augustan
" plainness," and explains those various efforts to raise it to
which we shall soon come.

Here are two passages from Middleton which show
him, the first I think as nearly as possible at his best
from our point of view ; the second, if not at his worst
(for it would hardly be fair to sift out such a thing), very
decidedly not at his best, but (as I can say from a
sufficient study of his whole works) by no means much,
if at all, below his average :

This is commonly called the first triumvirate ; which was nothing
else, in reality, but a traitorous conspiracy of three the most

powerful citizens of Rome, | to extort | from their country, | by

violence, | what they could not | obtain | by law. | Pompey's chief
motive was to get his acts confirmed by Caesar in his consulship ;
Caesar's, by giving way to Pompey's glory, to advance his own ; and
Crassus's, to gain that ascendant, which he could not sustain alone,
by the authority of Pompey and the vigour of Caesar. But Caesar,
who formed the scheme, easily saw that the chief advantage of it
would necessarily redound to himself: he knew that the old enmity
between the other two, though it might be palliated, could never be
healed without leaving a secret jealousy between them ; and as, by
their common help, he was sure to make himself superior to all
others, so, by managing the one against the other, he hoped to gain,
at last, a superiority also over them both. To cement this union
therefore the more strongly, by the ties of blood as well as interest,
he gave his daughter Julia, a beautiful and accomplished young
lady, in marriage to Pompey ; and, from this era, all the Roman
writers date the origin of the civil wars which afterwards ensued,
and the subversion of the Republic, in which they ended.

If the religion of a country was to be considered only as an
imposture ; an engine of government to keep the people in order ;

262 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

even then an endeavour to unhinge it, unless with a design to
substitute a better in its stead, would in my opinion be highly
unreasonable. But should the priests of such a religion, for the
sake of their authority and power, labour to impose their own
failures for divine truths ; to possess the people with an enthusiastic
zeal for them, manageable only by themselves and to be played
even against the government, as oft as it served their separate
interests ; in such a case, 'tis the duty of every man who loves his
country and his fellow-creatures, to oppose all such attempts ; to
confine religion to its proper bounds ; to the use for which it was
instituted ; of inspiring benevolence, modesty, submission into the
people ; nor suffer the credit of it to grow too strong for that of the
State ; the authority of the priest, for that of the magistrate.

Here there is no positive fault to find with No. i ; on
the contrary, it gives us a pretty good notion what made
people admire Middleton. It is a very fair example of
the clear, business-like style ; it is even not inharmonious
in the balanced mode. 1 But it does little if anything
more than escape zircharmony : harmony in any distinct
and delightful sense it cannot be said to possess. No. 2,
on the other hand, begins in much the same way, but, in
the second sentence, goes from not bad to very decided
badness and inharmoniousness. It is too long ; the
members of it are badly adjusted ; the combination of
" manageable," which itself would be manageable enough
in Latin, gives a jolt in sense and a jar in sound to the
English ; and the subsequent clauses are ill-jointed, ill-
interproportioned, and productive, as a whole, of no
rhythmical effect.

At such an effect, indeed, it is pretty certain that
Middleton did not aim, or dream of aiming, and it would
be absurd to subject his productions to any process of
rhythmical analysis. If he has not actually attained the
" flatness and meanness " of the Photian warning, he has
gone very near it, except in such a piece as the Letter to
Venn, where interested controversy excites him up to, but
not beyond, a tone of dignity.

This, not exactly cacorrhythmic but, arrhythmic char-
acter affects almost all the prose of the first half of the
eighteenth century, except where, as we have seen in

1 See the scanned portion.

viii AUGUSTAN PROSE 263

Bolingbroke, the oratorical cadence manifests itself emi-
nently, or where, as in the last-mentioned work of Middleton,
the thrust and parry of controversy and personal feeling
infuses a rhythm of its own. It is visible in the very
remarkable learnt English of Hume and Robertson, in the
pinchbeck of " Junius," in such vigorous and really idiom-
atic stuff as the writing of William Law, in the sinewy
but graceless, if not exactly ungraceful, logic of Butler.

But the inevitable law of ups-and-downs, which no- Efforts at
where works more regularly than here, decreed the rise of vanety '
dissatisfaction with this drabness of colour and monotony
of sound. It was too early to go back to gorgeous
phraseology and intricate symphonic effects. But the
unfailing engine of balance, which all the writers mentioned
applied more or less freely, and all others, but the lowest,
to some extent, could be set to work more and more
elaborately, and it was. A third writer of the Scotch
school (let it be remembered that we have not merely
probability but positive evidence to establish the fact of
their deliberately writing English as a half -foreign
language), Adam Smith, exhibits the tendency, combined
with that of step-arrangement, almost before he could
have learnt anything from his enemy, Johnson, as here,
where I have taken the liberty to carve the paragraph
into its constituent rhythmical members.

The violator of the more sacred laws of justice can never reflect Adam Smith,
on the sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him,
without feeling all the agonies of shame and horror and consterna-
tion. When his passion is gratified, and he begins coolly to reflect
on his past conduct, he can enter into none of the motives which
influenced it. They appear now as detestable to him as they did
always to other people. By sympathising with the hatred and
abhorrence which other men must entertain for him, he becomes in
some measure the object of his own hatred and abhorrence. The
situation of the person, who suffered by his injustice, now calls upon
his pity. He is grieved at the thought of it, regrets the unhappy
effects of his own conduct, and feels at the same time that they have
rendered him the proper object of the resentment and indignation of
mankind, and of what is the natural consequence of resentment,
vengeance and punishment. The thought of this perpetually haunts
him, and fills him with terror and amazement. He dares no longer
look society in the face, but imagines himself, as it were, rejected,

264 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and thrown out from the affections of all mankind. He cannot hope
for the consolation of sympathy in this his greatest and most dreadful
distress. The remembrance of his crimes has shut out all fellow-
feeling with him from the hearts of his fellow -creatures. The
sentiments which they entertain with regard to him are the very
thing which he is most afraid of. Everything seems hostile, and
he would be glad to fly to some inhospitable desert, where he might
never more behold the face of a human creature, nor read in the
countenance of mankind the condemnation of his crimes. But
solitude is still more dreadful than society. His own thoughts can
present him with nothing but what is black, unfortunate, and
disastrous, the melancholy foreboding of incomprehensible misery
and ruin. The horror of solitude drives him back into society, and
he comes again into the presence of mankind, astonished to appear
before them, loaded with shame and distracted with fear, in order to
supplicate some little protection from the countenance of those very
judges who he knows have already all unanimously condemned him.
Such is the nature of that sentiment which is properly called remorse ;
of all the sentiments which can enter the human breast the < most
dreadful. It is made up of shame from the sense of the impropriety
of past conduct ; of grief for the effects of it ; of pity for those who
suffer by it ; and of the dread and terror of punishment from the
consciousness of the justly provoked resentment of all rational
creatures.

The violator of the more sacred laws of justice can never reflect

on the sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him,

without feeling all the agonies of shame and horror and consternation.

When his passion is gratified,

and he begins coolly to reflect on his past conduct,

he can enter into none of the motives which influenced it.

They appear now as detestable to him

as they did always to other people.

By sympathising with the hatred and abhorrence

which other men must entertain for him,

he becomes in some measure the object

of his own hatred and abhorrence.

The situation of the person,

who suffered by his injustice,

now calls upon his pity.

He is grieved at the thought of it,

regrets the unhappy effects of his own conduct,

and feels at the same time that they have rendered him the proper
object of the resentment and indignation of mankind, and of
what is the natural consequence of resentment, vengeance and
punishment.

The thought of this perpetually haunts him,

and fills him with terror and amazement.

He dares no longer look society in the face,

via AUGUSTAN PROSE 265

but imagines himself, as it were, rejected, and thrown out from the

affections of all mankind.

He cannot hope for the consolation of sympathy
in this his greatest and most dreadful distress.
The remembrance of his crimes has shut out
all fellow-feeling with him from the hearts of his fellow-creatures.
The sentiments which they entertain with regard to him
are the very thing which he is most afraid of.
Everything seems hostile,

and he would be glad to fly to some inhospitable desert,
where he might never more behold the face of a human creature,
nor read in the countenance of mankind the condemnation of his

crimes.

But solitude is still more dreadful than society.
His own thoughts can present him with nothing
but what is black, unfortunate, and disastrous,
the melancholy foreboding of incomprehensible misery and ruin.
The horror of solitude drives kim back into society ',
and he comes again into the presence of mankind,
astonished to appear before them,
loaded with shame
and distracted with fear,
in order to supplicate some little protection from the countenance of

those very judges who he knows have already all unanimously

condemned him.

Such is the nature of that sentiment,
which is properly called remorse ; of all the sentiments which can

enter the human breast
the most dreadful. It is made up

of shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct ;
of grief for the effects of it ;
of pity for those who suffer by it ;
and of the dread and terror of punishment from the consciousness of

the justly provoked resentment of all rational creatures.

This 1 is comparatively simple in its swing backwards
and forwards, and its architecture of extended clauses ;
while the two italicised phrases especially show the
novice. Johnson would almost certainly have made the
second run " The horror of solitude drives him back into
the shelter of society," or something of that sort But
more of that when we come to the Great Cham himself.

Before doing so, it may be well to call a halt for some

1 Of course, a similar process may be applied not merely to Hooker or
Bacon, but even to Taylor or Browne ; but to nothing like the same extent, and
with a vast deal left unaccounted for, and corresponding to nothing here. It
is folding against fluency.

266 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

interim general observations, which may be expanded in the

on S< this ti0nS Interchapter, but cannot be wholly pretermitted here.

prose. It may already have suggested itself to an observant

reader that, independently of a tendency to impoverish
rhythm, or rather in pretty close dependence on such
impoverishment, a remarkable difference in kind of
rhythmical arrangement manifests itself. Foot-scansion
is still applicable in fact, as should have been sufficiently
shown by this time, it is as impossible for prose as for
poetry to get out of it. But at the very moment when
the quality of the individual foot was assuming a
tyrannous importance of uniformity in verse, it was
almost disappearing in prose. Except at the end of
clauses and sentences (to which point accordingly Hurd
(v. sup.\ all unknowing of the general law, but observing it,
devoted his chief attention), the constitution of the feet
produces very little effect, and for the most part is only
technically noticeable. 1 The balance of blocks of feet,
which corresponds in prose to the variety and symphonic
interweaving of lines in verse, only requires consideration
of the blocks themselves, and indeed might be rather
endangered by anything else. The architecture, to
change the analogy, is not exactly " Cyclopean," because
the blocks of which it consists are in some cases fair and
square ashlar ; but they are of great size, and the orna-
ment consists almost solely in their overlapping and
arrangement, not in any carving or arcading.

Attempts to It was therefore in the direction of minuter and more
complicated attention to details of arrangement that
attempts at improvement were likely to be first made ;
and this in accordance with the general tendency of the
century till nearly its close, when the reaction in all ways
was all the more violent took place, not by way of
revolt against the general arrangement, but by way of
supplement and embellishment of these details.

Into the more general controversies about Johnson's
style there is little need for us to enter. It was, of course,

1 To which it may be added that the "extended feet," or groups of six or
even more syllables, suggest themselves more than ever.

via AUGUSTAN PROSE 267

extravagantly caricatured and unjustly depreciated by Johnson .
the earlier Romantics ; and scanty justice was done to it v^
even by a person so very unlike a Romantic as Macaulay. ing him.
On the other hand, some recent authorities of great
competence have reverted to even more than the admira-
tion of contemporaries ; and my friend Sir Henry Craik
thinks that the great doctor " set a standard of prose style
that might establish its own laws beyond all gainsaying "
that, if I do not misunderstand him, Johnson set " a model
for all time." One may dissent as strongly as possible
from the first set of views without quite going to the
furthest length of the second. I should myself say that
if any one man ever set a model for all time in English
prose it was Dryden ; that while Swift in one way and
Addison in another had lengthened and varied the
Drydenian model, their contemporaries and successors
had mainly derogated from it ; and that it was Johnson's
work to restore it, with fresh and striking, if not always
quite palmary, variations, and in a manner which could be
easily followed. But our business is to show, with especial
reference to rhythm, what that manner was.

Whatever the much -talked -of influence of Browne His relation
upon Johnson may have been, it certainly was small to Browne -
here. A characteristic sentence of Johnson and a
characteristic sentence of Sir Thomas could only be
compared, as regards rhythm, by an ear so dull as to be
ab initio disqualified. Every now and then the virility of
Johnson's natural genius will produce something quite out
of his ordinary mannerism, and of all time or of no time
at all. But I think it not rash to say that it never takes
either Browne's special flow, or any of the special seven-
teenth-century cadences. The general principles of John-
son's sentence-and-clause architecture, and consequently of
his sentence-and-clause rhythmical effect, are simply those
which we have traced from Dryden before him to Smith
alongside of him parallelism, balance, and occasionally
what we have called " step " construction the lengthen-
ing and shortening of kola in systematic arrangement, like
the sky-line of a certain kind of gable or the section-profile

268 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of the perron of a house. His main peculiarity this
statement has been demurred to by his extreme admirers
as grudging, but I think it can be proved to the hilt is
parallelism pushed to an extreme, and sometimes beyond all
doubt an exaggerated, degree. To exhibit the inwardness
of Johnson's handling, as in the two following passages,
one really wants, as in some other cases, coloured inks.

The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or
to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them j either
to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the
prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as
to give them fresh grace and more powerful attractions, to spread
such flowers over the regions through which the intellect has already
made its progress, as may tempt it to return, and take a second
view of things hastily passed over, or negligently regarded.

Either of these labours is very difficult, because that they may
not be fruitless, men must not only be persuaded of their errors, but
reconciled to their guide ; they must not only confess their ignorance,
but, what is still less pleasing, must allow that he from whom they
are to learn is more knowing than themselves.

It might be imagined that such an employment was in itself
sufficiently irksome and hazardous j that none would be found so
malevolent as wantonly to add weight to the stone of Sisyphus; and
that few endeavours would be used to obstruct those advances to
reputation, which must be made at such an expense of time and
thought, with so great hazard in the miscarriage, and with so little
advantage from the success.

Yet there is a certain race of men, that either imagine it their
duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every
work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of
fame, and value themselves upon giving ignorance and envy the first
notice of a prey.

Even the acquisition of knowledge is often much facilitated by the
advantages of society : he that never compares his notions with those
of others, readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, and very seldom
discovers the objections which may be raised against his opinions ;
he, therefore, often thinks himself in possession of truth, when he
is only fondling an error long since exploded. He that Jias neither
companions nor rivals in his studies, will always applaud his own
progress and think highly of his performances, because he knows
not that others have equalled or excelled him. And I am afraid it
may be added, that the student who withdraws himself from the
world will soon feel that ardour extinguished which praise or
emulation had enkindled, and take the advantage of secrecy to sleep,
rather than to labour.

viii AUGUSTAN PROSE 269

Now this mosaic arrangement, necessarily and of itself,
creates rhythm ; and this rhythm is as necessarily
harmonious to a certain extent. Both the resemblances
and the differences produce this necessity, and their multi-
plicity and intricacy increase the quality of the rhythm
itself. But any one who examines Johnson's composition
with sufficient care will discover that whether deliberately
and consciously or not, as has been said so often, does
not in the least matter he adds immensely, and as none
of his forerunners, save perhaps Addison and certainly
Berkeley, had done, while these had done it to a much
less extent, by varying or repeating, coupling or contrasting,
the rhythmical and musical value of the clauses, word-
groups, and words paralleled with each other. Compare

" hastily | passed over " with " negligently | regarded " ;
value together " the acquisition of knowledge " | with
" the advantages of society " ; juxtapose deftly " errors "
and " guide " ; consider the more complicated criss-cross
of " hazard in the miscarriage " | and " advantage | from

the success."

The result of such study which may be considerably
amplified even from these extracts, but which may, of
course, be much better supplemented by wider reading of
Johnson must surely be clear already. Not merely
does Johnson probably aim at, and certainly secure,
much more rhythmical character than had been seen for
nearly a century ; but he secures it, to a large extent, by
recurrence to the manipulation of the individual foot, as
well as of the clause or block. This was a great recovery,
and it merited the admiration which it received. I may
even go so far, in the direction of Sir Henry Craik's
encomium, as to say that Johnson did lay down more
imitable examples, and so indirectly canons, of the Augustan
style than any one had ever done before.

Nothing could be easier and nothing could be more
insufficient than to divide up these passages as we did

270 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

in the case of Smith. The divisions are there so patent
to the ear, if not even to the eye, that almost any man
could mark them off as fast as he reads the passage.
But they are very much more intricate ; and they have
not merely general and external, but particular and multi-
plied internal, correspondences or contrasts of the most
curious kind.

Thus we have, in the first place and paragraph, the
obvious parallelism of the clauses introduced by the
repeated " cithers " and " ors." In the second place, but in
this same paragraph, we have the telescoping out of these
clauses, so that the first " either " clause has six words
exclusive of the " either," and the first " or " clause ten ;
while the second "either" has sixteen and the second
" or " no less than fifty-eight. 1 But this is nothing like
all. In the third place, we find parallelism within
parallelism. " Teach " corresponds to " recommend " ;
" what is not known " to " known truths by his manner of
adorning them." " Let in new light upon the mind " sets
to " open new scenes to the prospect " in a single main
clause itself. Nor does the " laborious orient ivory sphere
in sphere " of the arrangement cease yet. " Light "
balances itself with " scene," " mind " with " prospect,"
within this very counterpoise. And so it goes on
throughout the parallelism of clause, not seldom ex-
panding into triplets, as in the italicised close of the third
paragraph.

But " example " and " imitable," as we wrote above,
are two words which inevitably arouse remembrance of
the other word that comes between them in the tag.
Are we here also to supply vitiis ?

Characteristics As a matter of fact, " Yes " ; as a matter of necessity,

Johnsonian " No." The drawbacks in the mould its stiffness, its

style. monotony, its indifference to the matter put inte it are

unmistakable and undeniable. From such immediate

followers as Hawkesworth to the almost inimitable

1 It has been suggested to me that the comparison would be strengthened
by giving the number of syllables in each clause. It is six, fifteen, eighteen,
eighty-three.

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 271

caricatures provided by Sydney Smith on Mackintosh, 1
by that respectable defender of the French Revolution
himself, almost beyond caricature, and by Miss Ferrier in
a short and charming passage, 2 the fact is proved beyond
all contradiction. But clearly this is no fault of Johnson's.
He did not write nonsense, either unintentionally or in
caricature. Whether it is not the fault of the style is a
subtler question, and perhaps it can only be answered by
a sort of admission that all hard-and-fast quasi-mechanical
forms of style are open to this drawback. The bottle
cannot help its contents, and the stronger and more rigid
its form is the more patient it is of bad wine. The
scaffolding or skeleton cannot help what you choose to
accumulate upon it or by its means.

But take the other side, and the justice, up to a certain
point, of Sir Henry Craik's view is attested from our own
position. Up to this time there had been hardly any-
thing to guide the rash neophyte in English prose. The
triplets and initial inversions of Fisher and his school,
the rudimentary balance of Ascham in one way and Lyly
in another, were rudimentary merely. The swallow-
sweeps of Hooker, and much more the half-amorphous
magnificence of the great seventeenth-century men, were
scarcely, or not at all, imitable. That memorable phrase
of Balzac's to his sister, Sans genie je suis flambe ("It is
all up with me if I have not genius "), might be written
over them all. So was it, in a different way, and after
the great change of style, with Dryden and Addison,
though not quite to the same extent perhaps with Swift.
But Swift's style is only applicable to a few purposes,
perhaps only to one that of satirical exposition and
comment. Arbuthnot is a first-class Swift, and Cobbett
a lower-class one ; I imagine that George Warrington
wrote like Swift, and I know that Henry Duff Traill did.

1 Too long to quote, but too delightful not to be more fully indicated.
It may be found very conveniently extracted by Mr. Bonar in Sir H. Craik's
English Prose, iv. 589, 590.

2 " Happy the country whose nobles are thus gifted with the power of
reflecting kindred excellence, and of perpetuating national virtue on the
broad basis of private friendship." The Inheritance, vol. i. pp. 49, 50
(London, 1882).

272 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Thackeray (in falsetto) could write like Addison, but
nobody else even in that. And who has ever written,
except " by and large," like Dryden ?

It would not be merely unfair, it would be untrue, to
say that Johnson made prose, as Pope is said to have
made poetry, " a mere mechanic art." The finer resources
of his composition, pointed out above, are by no means
mechanical, and it was not his fault if his imitators
neglected them or could not reach them. But he un-
doubtedly did provide something approaching to mechanism
something like " plant," that, used with reasonable care,
would turn out a pretty certain and a rather uniform
result. Still, this result, in his own case, has qualities
including that just mentioned, but going beyond it
which are very far from mechanical dignity, if not
magnificence ; decent architectural scheme of proportion
and even ornamentation instead of the examples of drab
stucco provided by writers like Middleton ; decorous
language instead of vulgarity and colloquialism ; a clear
grammar ; a vocabulary sometimes, though not so much as
used to be thought, over-Latinised, and constantly injured
by the great vice of the century in prose and verse alike
unnecessary and therefore sometimes ludicrous or
disgusting periphrasis but, on the whole, useful and
effective ; and seldom, if ever (what it has most unjustly
been accused of being), tautologous. Above all, he may
be said to have restored the consideration of rhythm to
an important place in the conditions of English com-
position. His rhythm may be too monotonous in principle
(it can hardly be said to be so in practice), and it certainly
never, or but occasionally and accidentally, attains the
more magical graces in kind never by any accident the
more elaborate in degree. But it is there ; and it is even
secured and guaranteed, as it had never been before, by
the mechanical devices adopted.
Burke : his This, partly at least, mechanical character makes the
style of the first and, in a way, greatest member of the
second group of Demiurges in this construction of
standard English style easy enough to analyse ; that of

vni AUGUSTAN PROSE 273

the second member is more difficult. Although the
superiority of Burke read to Burke heard is one of those
things that it is hardly lawful to mention because of
their hackneyedness, yet just as it is well to remember
that Shakespeare was, after all, a dramatist, it is also
well to remember that Burke was, before all, an orator.
His lexis may have been altogether superior to his hypo-
crisis ; but it is quite certain that he always wrote and
thought as a speaker. The Thoughts on a Regicide Peace
and the Letter to a Noble Lord are practically as con-
cionatory as any of the actual speeches and more
effectively so. The greatest passages of the Present
Discontents and the French Revolution are oratory pure
and simple. Moreover, it is another constat that Burke
began by the imitation in style, if by the criticism in
matter, of Bolingbroke, who was an orator or nothing.
Further still, it has been already observed that the whole
tendency of style in this century was of the same kind.
Even Johnson's, though the complexity of its arrange-
ment, and the excessive dignity of its manner, would make
it very tedious to hear, and, except for quick intellects,
not too easy to follow, is oratorical in principle ; Burke's
was so both in principle and in practice.

Now oratorical rhythm per se (as has been observed His declared
almost to satiety, no doubt) is somewhat limited. But method -
if the orator allows himself any considerable amount of
description, illustration, and the like, his range of rhythm
becomes largely extended. Burke is said * to have
expressed it as both his principle and his practice that
every " purple " passage should contain, not merely a
thought, but an image and a sentiment. The style of
the eighteenth century had hitherto busied itself much
with thought, to a certain extent with a certain kind of
sentiment, but hardly at all with imagery ; and the
peculiar character both of its thought and of its senti-
ment had not lent itself to any great variety or fineness

1 See De Quincey, Essay on Rhetoric. The remark was made to
Dr. Lawrence, of Rolliad notoriety. As for the principle, I think I have
seen it formulated earlier than by Burke, but I cannot remember exactly where.

274 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Early
examples.

Middle.

of rhythmical expression. But imaginative writing, even
when the imagination is limited in the Addisonian sense
to " images furnished by sight," admits of, and, in fact,
demands, an instrument of far more strings, a concert
of far more instruments, to express itself; and this was
well seen of Burke. His earlier work, indeed, displays
\[^\Q o f the good influence. The Vindication, as has
been said, is partly a parody, partly a direct imitation,
of Bolingbroke. As to the Sublime and Beautiful, that
from one side diverting, from another disappointing work,
it is almost sufficient to say that Burke, though he actually
concludes it with a section on the sources of these qualities
" as found in words," says absolutely nothing of their
rhythmical arrangement, even in poetry ; but speaks
volumes, as to the actual condition of his mind and taste,
by preferring Pope's flat paraphrase and " amplification "
of Homer's lines on Helen to the exquisite description
of Belphcebe in Spenser.

In what may be called the " middle " work which
includes most of the Speeches, and those Thoughts on
the Present Discontents, which, as has been said, are
practically a long speech, some changes, and even some
advances, are visible. Something of the Johnsonian
scheme, though with a difference, may be seen in two
passages towards the beginning and the end of the
Thoughts :

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present
possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant
hopes of the future are the common dispositions of the greatest
part of mankind ; indeed the necessary effects of the ignorance and
levity of the vulgar. 1

Of what sort of materials must that man be made how must
he be tempered and put together, who can sit whole years in
Parliament with five hundred and fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst
the storm of such tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so
many wits and tempers and characters, in the agitation of such
mighty questions, in the accession of such vast and ponderous

1 The "ignorance and levity of the vulgar" seem to have made some
progress since Burke's time. They have learnt to forget "to lament the
past."

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 275

interests, without seeing any sort of men whose character, conduct,
and disposition would lead him to associate himself with them to
aid and be aided in any one system of public utility ?

To complain of the age we live in,
to murmur at the present possessors of power,
to lament the past,

to conceive extravagant hopes of the future
are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind ;
indeed, the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the
vulgar.

Of what sort of materials

must that man be made

how must he be tempered and put together,

who can sit whole years in Parliament

with five hundred and fifty of his fellow-citizens,

amidst the storm of such tempestuous passions,

in the sharp conflict of so many wits and tempers and characters,

in the agitation of such mighty questions,

in the accession of such vast and ponderous interests,

without seeing any sort of men

whose character, conduct, and disposition would lead him to associate

himself with them
to aid and be aided in any one system of public utility ?

Here, as the typographical disposition will have shown
at once, there is rhythm, but rhythm attained almost
solely by the parallelism of the members, and the difference
of their length and terminations.

He manages, however, to get a little more out of the
following definite picture (though it is curious to think
how much more still might have been got out of that
gorge of the Avon, of which good judges have very truly
said that if it were anywhere but in England it would
be one of the sights of the world) :

As for the trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs up in
little minds, though it should show itself even in this court, it has
not made the slightest impression on me. The highest flight of
such clamorous birds is winged in an inferior region of the air. We
hear them, and we look upon them, just as you, gentlemen, when
you enjoy the serene air on your lofty rocks, look down upon the
gulls that skim the mud of your river when it is exhausted of its tide.

This has not a little merit, though both the rocks

276 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP-

and the gulls might have their attributes amplified and
cadenced further with no small profit.

Later. But it was not till the last glorious decade of Burke's

life when he at last gave up to mankind what had too
frequently before been restricted to party, and showed
himself the Apollo of the loathsome reptiles, the St.
Michael of the hideous fiends who were uncivilising
Europe that he attained the full majesty of his style.
There is no need to seek for instances ; the two most
famous and best known passages have never, at least to
my knowledge, been analysed from this special point of
view before, and will " amply repay the expense " of
such analysis here.

Examples and It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of

comments. France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never lighted

on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful

vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering

the elevated sphere she just began to move in ; glittering | like the

morning | star, | full of life, | and splendour, | and joy. Oh! what a
revolution ! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without
emotion that elevation and that fall ! Little did I dream when
she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant,
respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp

honour | and of cavaliers. | I thought ten thousand swords must
have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that

threatened her with insult. But the age | of chivalry | is gone.
That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded ; and
the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more,
shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud
submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart,
which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations,
the nurse of manly sentiments and heroic enterprise is gone ! It is
gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt
a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated
ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice
itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 277

How often has this passage been laughed at ! and
how easy it is to laugh at it ! I am not talking of those
who follow the smug respectability of Mackintosh in
taking briefs from Mr. Attorney Hubert and Mr. Solicitor
Chaumette as to Marie Antoinette's character. But it is
a passage undoubtedly sentimental ; and you can make
fun of sentiment as easily as you can trample flowers in
mud. Yet if any one can regard it impartially, and (as
he must be able to do if he has any critical faculty at all)
forget jokes about " the cheap defence of nations " and so
forth, he will be puzzled to find in English, for more than
a century before it, a more beautiful passage merely as
harmonious phrase. The rhythm is still generally of the
kind we have been discussing stepped and paralleled
and balanced. Except in these ways, the author's chief
device of variation and harmonic contrast is connected (as
we have seen had become usual since Addison) with

the ends of the clauses and sentences " years " and " at

~ - _ _ -u~

Versailles " ; " orb," " touch," but then " vision " ; the

descents of the two next sentences to the contrasted

monosyllables of " joy " and " fall " ; and so throughout. 1
But, in its own way, in the juxtaposition of long sentences
and short ; of rising and falling clauses ; even, a new
thing to be thought of, or rather an old one revived, in the
vowel-sound of the paralleled word-groups "that senstbilt'ty
of prznczple," " that chastity of honour," the thing is a
masterpiece a little in bravura perhaps to those who,
while doing its form justice, do not sympathise with its
matter, but certainly something much above bravura to
those who do.

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial
institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful
instincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason,
we have derived several other, and those no small benefits, from
considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always

1 Not, however, wholly. The scansion given of portions might have been
carried throughout with no violence and some advantage. But the rhythm is
still, largely if not mainly, a rhythm of sections.

278 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of
freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an
awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a
sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence
almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first
acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a
noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a

pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has | its bearings | and its

ensigns | armorial. It has its galleries of portraits ; its monumental
inscriptions ; its records, evidences, and titles. We procure
reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature
teaches us to revere individual men ; on account of their age ; and
on account of those from whom they are descended. All your
sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a
rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued,
who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts
rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines
of our rights and privileges.

The substance of this extract requires and receives a
setting on a graver and quieter motive. It has some
familiar rhetorical devices, such as the abundance of
epanaphora or repetition of the same initial words, " It
has," etc. Its long sentences shorten in the central group,
and then swell out towards the end in an equally
ceremonial fashion. Nowhere, perhaps, is the trick of
expanding parallel clauses more admirably applicable than
in those of the last sentence, and in one point the inver-
sion and the splendid vowel-music of " ensigns armorial "
we see revived the grandest manner of the seventeenth
century itself.

But the passage on which Burke is said to have most
specially prided himself is the great utilising, in the
Letter to the Duke of Bedford, of the scenery, the history,
and the lesson of Windsor Castle :

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 279

It would take pages to bring out even the most strictly
rhythmical characteristics of this wonderful tour de force ;
for there is hardly a word, save the merest particles, which
does not contribute to the effect. The antithetic emphasis
of " their " and " our " ; the arrangement of " ideas,"
" religion," and " law " ; the climax of the clause from
" But as " to " Sion," and the parallel description of

1 The quotation-<r0<fiz in the original is rhetorically separable, and there are
reasons at the present moment for separating and presenting it only in a
note. May it soon be restored to the text !

" Amen ! and so be it : and so it will be,

Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit."

280 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Windsor itself ; the splendour of the " kindred and coeval
towers " ; the touch of the xenon the strange arresting
word in " frank -pledge "; the ironic drawl of "the
low | fat | Bedford | level"; the ordered processional and
recessional of cadences to the close all this cannot be
beaten in the style. You may like some other style
better if you please : I myself prefer several others. But
if you do not like this, if you do not see the mastery and
the beauty of this, there is a blind facet to your eye for
style, a deaf spot in the drum of your ear for rhythm.

Even if the gossip about this passage were only gossip,
there could be no doubt that the man who wrote it was
deliberately aiming at the Longinian " Sublime " at a
" height of eloquence " which should be far above, and
widely separated from, any mere " naked, natural way
of speaking," or any conversational norm, even convention-
ally clothed beyond the naked and raised above the natural.
It is, of course, open to that vague and vernacular charge
of being " stilted," which is the usual refuge of the Philistine
in self-defence. It is open likewise to a subtler objection,
one less easy also to ignore, that its method has some-
thing of Rhetoric, if not in the bad sense, at any rate in
that which her biographer and exponent, Martianus,
somewhat slily touched when he said that " she can do
nothing quietly" We may go even further and admit
that it evades, rather than definitely discards, the fault of
all eighteenth -century style, that of being too sharply
divided into blocks. Burke might "wind into a subject
like a serpent," as far as his argumentative and expository
manner was concerned ; but he certainly did not serpen-
tine so much as echelon his form. The noiseless, foamless,
irresistible tide of words in which Browne is the greatest
magician, and which some nineteenth-century writers have
mastered not ill, is not for Burke. But the modes of
majesty are many, and he has displayed more than one.
Above all, he has shown (and his great reputation and
influence made the exhibition operative in almost the
highest degree) that majesty is compatible with clear-
ness, with order, and with an abstinence from any

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 281

excessive indulgence in unusual or unfamiliar words.
The style and the rhythm of Burke are still " classical,"
but they employ all the ornament that a classical style
admits.

Although some recent attempts to depreciate Coleridge
as a critic are merely negligible, everybody knows, or
should know, that his genius occasionally indulged itself
in the most uncritical utterances possible. And of these
the observation that " Gibbon's manner is the worst of all "
ranks pretty high, or low, according to calculus. In fact,
the earlier Romantics, though they found less fault with
Burke than with Gibbon himself or with Johnson, very
naturally did not like any one of the three great beauti-
fiers of the Augustan style much. We have none of their
causes of prejudice, and we ought to be able to see the
merits of both orders.

Those of Gibbon, from our present point of view, are Gibbon : his
certainly extraordinary. As a constant master of prose **
rhythm he seems to me the superior both of Johnson and
of Burke ; and he is certainly less open to the charge of
visible skeleton-clock mechanism than the one, or to the
reproach of calculated purple patches than the other.
The only valid objection that I know against his harmony
is that it is monotonous ; and I am by no means sure
that this is not very much a matter of taste. Once more,
one would not like all literature to be Gibbon ; but one
may be very well satisfied with that part of literature
which is. Moreover, if it is a merit that a writer's sources
of rhythm should not be too easily perceptible, Gibbon
may certainly claim it. I have admired and enjoyed his
style for at least half a century, and I have more than
once or twice endeavoured to give critical account of it ;
but its secret, though perfectly easy to feel, is very diffi-
cult to describe precisely. Take two passages, one from
the Decline and Fall, the other from the Memoirs : x

1 I know, of course, that the textus receptus of the Memoirs is apparently
a " made-up " one. But if so, Lord Sheffield must have been an exceedingly
clever maker-up, and I wish all editors who pursue the doubtful art of text-
making had possessed his skill.

282 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The protection of the Rhastian frontier and the persecution of
the Catholic church detained Constantius in Italy above eighteen
months after the departure of Julian. Before the emperor returned
into the East, he indulged his pride and curiosity in a visit to the
ancient capital. He proceeded from Milan to Rome along the
^Emilian and Flaminian ways ; and, as soon as he approached
within forty miles of the city, the march of a prince who had never
vanquished a foreign enemy assumed the appearance of a triumphal
procession. His splendid train was composed of all the ministers
of luxury ; but in a time of profound peace, he was encompassed
by the glittering arms of the numerous squadrons of his guards
and cuirassiers. Their streaming banners of silk, embossed with
gold, and shaped in the form of dragons, waved round the person
of the emperor. Constantius sat alone on a lofty car resplendent
with gold and precious gems ; and, except when he bowed his
head to pass under the gates of the cities, he affected a stately
demeanour of inflexible and, as it might seem, of insensible
gravity. The severe discipline of the Persian youth had been
introduced by the eunuchs into the imperial palace ; and such< were
the habits of patience which they had inculcated, that during
a slow and sultry march, he was never seen to move his hand
towards his face, or to turn his eyes either to the right or to the
left. He was received by the magistrates and senate of Rome ;
and the emperor surveyed with attention the civil honours of the
republic and the consular images of the noble families. The streets
were lined with an innumerable multitude. Their repeated acclama-
tions expressed their joy at beholding, after an absence of thirty-two
years, the sacred person of their sovereign ; and Constantius himself
expressed, with some pleasantry, his affected surprise that the
human race should thus suddenly be collected on the same spot.
The son of Constantine was lodged in the ancient palace of
Augustus ; he presided in the Senate, harangued the people from
the tribunal which Cicero had so often ascended, assisted with
unusual courtesy at the games of the circus, and accepted the
crowns of gold, as well as the panegyrics which had been prepared
for the ceremony by the deputies of the principal cities. His short
visit of thirty days was employed in viewing the monuments of art
and power, which were scattered over the seven hills and the
interjacent valleys. He admired the awful majesty of the capital,
the vast extent of the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian, the severe
simplicity of the Pantheon, the massy greatness of the amphi-
theatre of Titus, the elegant architecture of the theatre of Pompey
and the temple of peace, and, above all, the stately structure
of the forum and column of Trajan ; acknowledging that the
voice of fame, so prone to invent and to magnify, had made an
inadequate report of the metropolis of the world. The traveller,
who has contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome, may conceive
some imperfect idea of the sentiments which they must have

vin A UGUSTAN PROSE 283

inspired when they reared their heads in the splendour of unsullied
beauty. 1

I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters who complain
that they have renounced a substance for a shadow ; and that their
fame (which sometimes is no insupportable weight) affords a poor
compensation for envy, censure, and persecution. My own ex-
perience, at least, has taught me a very different lesson. Twenty
happy years have been animated by the labour of my history ; and
its success has given me a name, a rank, a character in the world,
to which I should not otherwise have been entitled. The freedom
of my writings has indeed provoked an implacable tribe ; but as I
was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to the buzzing of
the hornets. My nerves are not tremblingly alive, and my literary
temper is so happily framed, that I am less sensible of pain than of
pleasure. The rational pride of an author may be offended rather
than flattered by vague indiscriminate praise ; but he cannot, he
should not, be indifferent to the fair testimonies of private and
public esteem. Even his moral sympathy may be gratified by the
idea that now, in the present hour, he is imparting some degree of
amusement or knowledge to his friends in a distant land : that one
day his mind will be familiar to the grandchildren of those who are
yet unborn. I cannot boast of the friendship or favour of princes ;
the patronage of English literature has long since been devolved on
our booksellers, and the measure of their liberality is the least
ambiguous test of our common success. Perhaps the golden
mediocrity of my fortune has contributed to fortify my application.

The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more ; and our
prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may possibly be
my last ; but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious

1 Gibbon's everlasting irony is assisted by rhythm, if it can hardly be said
to form a part thereof. "The protection | of the Rhsetian | frontier | and
the persecution | of the Catholic | church" marks the alliance early here.
And his constant allusive periphrasis or parenthesis ("who had never
vanquished a foreign enemy," "the son of Constantine," "from the tribunal
which Cicero had so often ascended ") stands in somewhat similar
relation to it. For actual cadences some have noted a recession or rescission

towards trochaic ending, as in "after the departure of | Julian," and several
other similar passages, one of which is italicised above. But, in the first
place, this does not seem to me a prose, but rather a verse, scansion. I

should arrange it "after | the departure | of Julian"; thus giving that juxta-
position of pseon (chiefly third} and amphibrach which will be found almost
omnipresent in Gibbon, and which may be a proximate cause of his peculiar
undulation. And if the whole of the sentence-ends be examined, it will be
found that not merely trochees but dactyls, not merely dactyls but anapaests,
iambs, and even long monosyllables, are quite sufficiently represented at the
closes. Perhaps I ought to have scanned more of Gibbon ; but, as in some
other cases, I thought it might be left to the reader.

284 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

in particular, still allow me about fifteen years. I shall soon enter
into the period which, as the most agreeable of his long life, was
selected by the judgment and experience of the sage Fontenelle.
His choice is approved by the eloquent historian of nature, who
fixes our moral happiness to the mature season in which our passions
are supposed to have calmed, our duties fulfilled, our ambition
satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basis. In
private conversation, that great and amiable man added the weight
of his own experience ; and this autumnal felicity might be ex-
emplified in the lives of Voltaire, Hume, and many other men of
letters. I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this
comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of
the mind or body ; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes,
the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge
with a browner shade the evening of life. 1

its general Here it may be observed that though both these

ofthe othe r hat P assa g es are fi ne > an d the second is famous, this latter
reformers. does not exhibit so much of Gibbon's characteristic style
and rhythm as the first. This may be due negatively to
Gibbon's having never " passed it for publication," or
positively to some manipulation of Sheffield's ; but of the
fact there can be little dispute. Except perhaps in the
more imaginative tone and colour of the well-known last
phrase (where " brown " is undoubtedly a reminiscence of
Dryden 2 ), the autobiographic peroration is much more any
gentleman's style at the period in perfection (for the
gentleman certainly is not one of the " mob " of his kind)
than any particular gentleman's. With the first it is
different. Some minor devices of its peculiar effect
rhythmical and other can be identified without difficulty.
The ear of the eighteenth century had been as a rule dull
(though we saw something of sensibility in Addison's) to
the musical advantages of proper names. Gibbon's special
subject supplied him with these lavishly, and his special
genius enabled him to use them to excellent effect. He

1 " Which sometimes is no insupportable weight " and " the eloquent
historian of nature " continue to exemplify the points noted in reference to
the other passages. The omission of the first, and the substitution of
" Buffon " for the second, would entirely do away with the wave effect.

2 Some may interject "Gray?" But that free borrower's "broader
browner shade " is not quite parallel, and in any case is most likely a reminis-
cence of the elder poet's peculiar use of "brown," as in "brown horror" for
"night," and elsewhere.

vin AUGUSTAN PROSE 285

retained the general system of antithetic balance, and of
" step " or " telescope " arrangement. But he contrived
in a fashion already confessed as easier to feel than strictly
to define to impress on his clauses, sentences, sentence-
groups, and paragraphs, a peculiar undulating movement
which, except occasionally and accidentally, I cannot
remember in any writer before him. This undulatory or
oscillatory motion is distinguished from that of Hooker
by the fact that it does not so much sink at the close as
maintain itself at a level from which the movement of
the next will somehow start. It may seem at first sight
preposterous to compare the Gibbonian sentence with the
Spenserian stanza ; yet they are, when considered carefully,
alike in their combined faculty of achieving rhythmical
completeness in the individual and at the same time
handing on the movement to the next member.

I do not mean to say that Gibbon was at first as The standard
much imitated as Johnson and Burke were in the direct Geor ian st y le -
way ; what I wish to point out is that all three represent
different ways of heightening the plain Augustan style
without making it distinctly ornate, much less flamboyant.
And there resulted, from the tendencies of which these
three were the most distinguished examples in the third
and fourth quarters of the century, that " standard
Georgian " style, the existence of which has been some-
times denied and oftener ignored, but which certainly
reigned at the close of that century, and for almost the
first quarter of the nineteenth. This style continued to
be regarded as the style at which regular teaching of
composition should aim, and even at the present day,
after two great outbursts of actual flamboyance, after
divers recrudescences of slovenliness, and through almost
innumerable forms of individual eccentricity, from those
of Carlyle and Meredith to those of Cluvienus and myself,
it remains with a quasi- Attic reputation, and is practised
by those who aim at being classics. This is the style of
which Southey is perhaps the most perfect and almost
the earliest representative, but which everybody of his
generation, with the exception of a very few neoterics, to

286 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

be noticed in the next chapter, wrote in more or less
perfection, according as his own genius and industry
would let him.

Southey. The motto of this style, and the secret of its apparent
perenniality, is once more old. In rhythm, as in every-
thing else, ars est celare artem. Take two famous
passages of Southey's own, the immortal close of the Life
of Nelson, and the peroration of his reply to the egregious
William Smith in the Wat Tyler matter. They are both,
of course, somewhat " in full dress," but every one who
knows and it is melancholy to think how few there are
probably who do know not merely the Life of Nelson,
but that of Wesley, and those of the " Admirals," and
many others, Espriella and Omniana, the Colloquies, which
extorted from Macaulay that amusing mixture of partisan
attack and scholarly acknowledgment, the HistoritsfvoA
above all the abounding and delightful Doctor knows
that Southey could carry the style not merely up to this
full dress without undue parade, but down to the very
extreme of what the century of his birth would have
called " an agreeable negligJ" without ever trenching on
vulgarity, or losing distinction.

There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon open-
ing the body, that in the course of nature he might have attained,
like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have
fallen prematurely whose work is done ; nor ought he to be lamented,
who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The
most triumphant death is that of the martyr ; the most awful, that of
the martyred patriot ; the most splendid, that of the hero in the
hour of victory ; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been
vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed
in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle
of inspiration, but a name and an example, which are at this hour
inspiring hundreds of the youth of England : a name which is our
pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our
strength.

How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a
favourable acceptance from after ages time will decide ; but a name
which, whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in the literary
history of its age, will certainly not perish. Some account of his
life will always be prefixed to his works, and transferred to literary

vni AUGUSTAN PROSE 287

histories, and to the biographical dictionaries not only of this but of
other countries. There it will be related of him that he lived in the
bosom of his family in absolute retirement ; that in all his writings
there breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality,
the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for the
melioration of mankind ; and that the only charge which malice
could bring against him was that, as he grew older, his opinions
altered concerning the means by which the melioration was to be
effected, and that, as he learned to understand the institutions of his
country, he learned to appreciate them rightly, to love, and to revere,
and to defend them. It will be said of him that, in an age of
personality, he abstained from satire ; and that during the course of
his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which
he ever condescended to reply was when a certain Mr. William
Smith insulted him in Parliament with the appellation of renegade.
On that occasion it will be said that he vindicated himself as it
became him to do, and treated his calumniator with just and
memorable severity. Whether it shall be added that Mr. William
Smith redeemed his own character by coming forward with honest
manliness and acknowledging that he had spoken rashly and unjustly
concerns himself, but is not of the slightest importance to me.

There are so many things to be said about this style,
and it might be illustrated from so many persons, that
the whole of this chapter, nay, a very large part of this
volume, would hardly be too much for the examples.
But speaking by the card, and considering rhythmically,
its note is, beyond all doubt, the adjustment of cadence
and symphony to matter, in such proportion and fashion
that you never feel the want of rhythmical and sonorous
quality, but at the same time are rarely tempted to con-
centrate your attention on this. All does not exactly
depend upon the subject ; but all is subordinated to it.
Of the generalities, however, the following Interchapter
should better speak.

INTERCHAPTER III

THE general character of the rhythm of Augustanism
and post-Augustanism in prose was foreshadowed in the
remarks made at the close of Interchapter II. concern-
ing that of the seventeenth-century ornate style, to which
it is, here as in all other ways, a direct opposite. To say
that it has none would be incorrect and in fact absurd ;
for, as has been observed before, entirely unrhythmical
prose is almost impossible, the merest conversation
having its accents and its emphases though it is true
that very clumsy writing may have little rhythm, and that
little ugly. It is the character of the rhythm that is
changed ; and in the investigation of this change there is
not a little interest.

In prose, as in verse, the set of the general taste was
now direct against polyphony. Just as, in the songs of
Apollo, they discouraged stanzas and sonnets and
fantastically outlined forms of lyric, so, in the words of
Mercury, they turned their backs on many - centred
harmony of internal composition, in clause and sentence
and paragraph, preferring either the merely conversa-
tional flow with as little emphasis as possible, or the
" methods of the declaimer " clauses of different length
indeed, but arranged in parallel, and partitioned off from
each other at the ends, by some definite similarity or con-
trast like that of rhyme, rather than distinguished through-
out by modulation of cadence from beginning to end.
And when (for the most part later) they began to aim at
heightening effect, and at superadding or at least developing
ornament, they could hardly avoid falling into stereotyped
moulds of it, as most notably of all in Johnson, but not
much less in Gibbon and even in Burke.

288

INTERCHAPTER III 289

At first, and especially in Dryden, the characteristic
defects and mannerisms of the style are somewhat masked.
There should be little doubt, for any one who has con-
sidered the subject from our present point of view, that
Dryden is not merely one of the greatest, but one of the
most puzzling masters of English prose. His ambi-
dexterity with the two harmonies led him to confine his
higher, or at least highest, strains to verse ; and we can
only guess what things like the opening of Religio Laid,
the famous " consideration of Life " in Aurengzebe, the
passage of the " wandering fires " in The Hind and the
Panther, and others, would have been in prose. But his
existing production in that kind, limited as it is to
" middle subjects " occupied almost wholly with easy
exposition, literary criticism, and popular dialectics
remains an extraordinary monument of combined earliness
and accomplishment. There had been nothing like it
before ; and, modern as it is in some ways, there has
been nothing like it since. But one thing we may notice
which it has in common with all its kind, and that is the
small handle which it gives to regular rhythmical analysis.
It is only in show-pieces like the famous encomium on
Shakespeare at the beginning, and that, which should be
almost equally famous, on Chaucer at the end, that definite
rhythm disengages itself from a pleasant stream of talk,
or a workmanlike tissue of argument, infinitely better, of
course, than talk and argument usually are, but with
nothing of the set piece about it, and with no ostensible
art at all.

Dryden was Addison's master in style, and there can
be little doubt that he acted in the same capacity, though
in a different fashion, to ungrateful " cousin Swift." If
we contrast his rhythm with, for instance, Temple's,
striking differences occur. There is nothing like that
famous coda of the poetry passage * in Dryden's prose, and
there is certainly nothing like it in Swift or in Addison. 2

1 V. sup. p. 237.

2 Compare the " Westminster Abbey," which approaches it very closely
in possibilities of modulation.

290 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

But the undulating irony of both the younger men,
whether in its less pronounced and more insinuating form,
as with Addison, or in its sharper and harder temper, as
with Swift, is, if not directly copied from Dryden, a further
carrying out of the same principles which made his.
Whether Kurd was right in thinking that Addison paid
conscious attention to the values of his clause-endings, it
is hard to say. I have admitted it to be not impossible,
while declining to consider it as very important. But it
is certain that in all these writers, including Berkeley,
who is perhaps in form the best of them all, the greater
number of the kola do not invite elaborate rhythmical
analysis, while the conclusions, and the total effect of the
contrasted or paralleled groups, do invite it.

But, in most of the more formal writing of the
eighteenth century, the conversational tone passes into
the oratorical, and the echo of the speech, the sermon, or
the lecture, besets the weary ear throughout. In letters
and in fiction, though in both it sometimes likewise
mounts the rostrum, it sinks or descends again to mere
talk which is not unpleasant it " says " very well, but it
never reaches prose "singing." And in a great deal of
the prose of the first half of the century, as has been
pointed out above, the absence of accompaniment of
sound to the sense, of music to the meaning becomes,
if not, as it sometimes is, positively disgusting, uninterest-
ing to the highest degree.

The means by which the three great style-raisers of
the later century Johnson, Burke, and Gibbon en-
deavoured to effect their objects have been carefully
examined. It will probably have suggested itself already
to some readers that they could not achieve complete
success because they omitted to provide themselves with
a sufficient reinforcement of " beautiful words " of those
words which at once force colour and outline on the
mind's eye, sound and echo on the mind's ear. A re-
morseless restriction to the understanding and that
no very deep one neither still prevailed, especially in
Johnson, who, moreover, though he excogitated a machine

INTERCHAPTER III 291

of sentence -production, sonorous enough and not ill-
formed, left it, and could not but leave it, a machine. 1

Nor, though they went a little farther in the right
direction, could Burke's varied appeal to the sentiments
and sometimes to the actual senses, Gibbon's gorgeous
historical pageantry of background and panorama of
action, entirely supply that fatal lack of variety which is
the curse of this whole period and department of prose.
Nevertheless, the standard style, which resulted from these
attempts to raise the plain, may undoubtedly, in its best
results at any rate, claim a very high place. Unless Mr.
Earle was right in thinking that the style of the tenth
century was such another a flight to which I cannot
reach I do not know any similar achievement in English
prose history considering prose for the moment as " the
instrument of the average purpose." It is not so good as
Dryden's, but it is certainly more adaptable and slightly
more universal in application, not to mention that there
is not about it, as there is about Dryden's, anything
intrinsically inimitable. To write it with the perfect ease
of Southey is indeed not for everybody, but to write this
style with adequacy and dignity is within the reach of any
educated person who chooses and cares. If there is an
educated person who does not care or choose, why he
must be, and if he is a person of sense as well as education,
is, prepared to pay the penalty. You may have your
own style at your own risk ; this patented and minted
common-form remains open, to you and to all, at none.

Nor, until the language alters more than it has done
for at least a hundred and fifty years, and in a fashion, as
distinguished from a degree, of which there has been no
sign for nearly two hundred and fifty, does it seem likely
that this style will ever grow obsolete. It corresponds in

1 There are, of course, sentences of his which far transcend machinery,
such as that given by Boswell from the MS. "Collection for the Rambler"
" The world lies all enamelled before him, as a distant prospect sun-
gilt " : where the remarkable effect of the final compound, as supplying one
of the missing "beautiful words," will be felt at once. There are others,
besides the well-known lona passage, in the Journey to the Western Isles,
and yet others outside of it. But the sentence in the text remains, I think,
generally true.

292 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

English to the style introduced by Descartes, or first
strikingly exemplified by him, in France a generation or
two before anything approaching it was seen with us ;
but it is, as suits the language, more tolerant though
still not very tolerant of neologism. Like the Cartesian
medium, it is perhaps rather free from faults than provided
with beauties, but while it is eminently unobjectionable,
its attractions are not purely negative. If it has not
exactly beauty (and how little it wants to attain that we
shall see when we come to such a slight beautification or
beatification of it as Newman's), it has that comeliness, ease,
and unobtrusive complaisance to circumstance, which
some persons, not extremely given to paradox, have, for
ordinary occasions at any rate, extolled above beauty in
women, and art, and scenery, and other companions a,nd
conditions of life.

CHAPTER IX

THE REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION

The necessity of reaction Its causes and bents Preoccupation of
the ground by poetry ; the Lake group and Scott Byron,
Shelley, and Keats The minors : Moore The Epicurean
Return to Coleridge in Anima Poetae General descriptive
character of these early passages The three chief pioneers
De Quincey Specimen phrases and passages, with analysis
and comment The Dream-Fugue and the Suspiria the chief
quarries Elaborate rhythm by no means often aimed at else-
where Its connection with dream The Suspiria again The
Autobiography De Quincey's relation to poetry Wilson
Landor : his characteristics The relations of his poetry and
his prose His critical utterances on the subject Results in a
"prose grand style" Specimens Some general observations
The four kinds of rhythm in relation to prose I. Non-prosaic
rhythm or poetry II. Hybrid verse-prose III. Pure prose
highly rhythmed IV. Prose in general.

ALLOWANCE (not, I think, ungenerous) has been made, at The necessity
the close of the preceding Interchapter, for the merits in of
rhythm, as in other ways, of the Augustan and post-
Augustan style, and of the standard development of it. But
I do not pretend that this attitude is anything more than
judicial ; or that, in my personal preference, even the finest
examples, actual or conceivable, of this order of style and
rhythm can vie with the ornater examples given by the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nor can I quite
understand how any one, unless blinded by the enchant-
ments of that deceiving dame Grammar, or regarding
Prose as not at all, or not in the main, an instrument of
delight, can prefer it. Beauty, of course, may be this to
thee and that to me ; but it scarcely admits of denial

293

294 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

that Augustan and standard prose is comparatively
destitute of that Variety which has been recognised of
old, by Classical as well as by Romantic criticism, as
the essential virtue of beautiful prose, when it ceases to be
a mere lorry for conveying the burden of brute meaning.
At any rate, and however this may be, it was certain
that, after so long a prevalence of the plainly phrased
and faintly or mechanically rhythmed style, the opposite
kind would have its turn.

its causes and For, besides the effect of the general law of revolution
and compensation, almost all the particular agencies, in
what is commonly called the Romantic Revival, made in
this direction. The taste for the picturesque x not merely,
in writings about that subject, forced the use of a
more gorgeous and highly coloured which necessarily
means a more variously and intricately rhythmed style,
but independently encouraged the desire for one. The
taste for the exotic multiplied and complicated the
vocabulary with new and strange-sounding words. The
reverence for Elizabethan and seventeenth-century litera-
ture revealed the buried magnificences which had been
so long ignored. The great development of critical
appreciation, as distinguished from rule -criticism, could
not leave the finer styles untried or untasted. And,
finally, the same movement against monotony, uniformity,
convention, which was breaking up the tyranny of the
heroic couplet in verse, almost necessitated the return to
complicated values and irregular outlines in prose. In
one sense, indeed, the return to flamboyant and polyphonic
prose was simply a further development of the very
movements which had effected the raising of post-
Augustan style itself. Johnson had learnt not a little
from Browne ; but he might have learnt, and others did
learn, a great deal more. Burke's alleged trinity of
" sentiment, idea, and image " wanted but little to become
a quaternity by the addition of " musical presentment."

1 If I were writing at greater length, I should like to show, from Gilpin,
where the earlier picturesque writers came short. Gray's often -quoted
" Sunrise " passage, in a late letter to Bonstetten, is, naturally, further
advanced.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 295

While if Gibbon had had more frequent touches of
poetry, and had not been content with the stately but
slightly monotoned, if not monotonous, splendour of the
main rhythm which he had once achieved, there is no
knowing what he might not have done in this direction.

For a time, however, according to the general course Preoccupa-
of literary history, poetry absorbed the chief attention j^unc/by
and displayed the chief results. All the great poets of poetry; the
the Revival (I must ask for a moment's grace as to Scott) a
were good prose-writers. But by far the larger number
of them, and of those who rank next, kept to the older
style in prose. Southey, the least of them as a poet,
was the greatest as a prose-man ; but he is also the
greatest treader of the standard via media, and has been
already selected as such. Wordsworth, if not so great a
master of prose as De Quincey would have him to be,
was certainly a master of it ; but the wind of the spirit,
which takes him off his legs now and then in verse, seldom
disturbs their peaceable prosaic progression. 1 We may
now, thanks to Mr. Ernest Coleridge and to Anima
Poetae? claim Coleridge, the almost universal pioneer, as
a pioneer here also ; and we shall return to him accord-
ingly. But, except in these long-unpublished fragments
and jottings, he hardly displays himself as a master of
ornateness in prose ; while his frankly confessed envy
of Southey's style, and vivid denunciation of his own
sentences as " Surinam toads with their young ones
clinging all round them," is well known.

As for Scott, if we had to do with a general history
of prose style, instead of a history of one aspect of it,
multipliciter distinguendum esset. The vulgar depreciation

1 An exception may be expected for The Convention of Cintra, in which,
by the way, De Quincey himself had a revising hand. The passionate dignity
of that noble composition certainly shall not be denied or belittled here. But
it is, naturally enough, almost pure Burke in rhythm, as in style generally.
" A highway of adamant for the sorrowful steps of generation after generation "
is admirable, but scarcely new. Even "in the midst of the woods, the
rivers, the mountains, the sunshine and shadows of some transcendant land-
scape," " transcendant " is a " book- word," almost a "gradus epithet," not
a mot propre or a mot de lumiere,

2 London, 1895.

296 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of him is here almost more of a vulgar error than is the
case in regard to his verse. Occasional carelessness, due
to invariable haste of composition, is the only part of
the indictment that can be sustained. But as regards
elaborately rhythmical prose, every one, of course, must
allow that he did not practise it as a rule. There are
great exceptions, chiefly in dialogue, or in what may be
called dramatic passages. The two finest of all are, I
think, the incomparable denunciation of Claverhouse by
Habakkuk Mucklewrath, 1 and that, if less tragical, almost
equally fine, invective of Meg Merrilies, 2 which the great
Lord Derby flung in those faces of Liberals who called

thee. | " If anybody says, "Oh, Biblical rhythm, and even the very words,"
let him be good enough to observe that, if the first clause is Biblical in phrase
and arrangement, the second is not ; while it might do him no harm to
notice also the skill with which the variation "thy heart," but "thine own
pride," obviates, at once, monotonous parisosis and too metrical rhythm.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 297

themselves Churchmen, in connection with the disestab-
lishment of the Church of Ireland. Many others could,
of course, be added ; but it would be needless for lovers
of Scott, and useless for others. And it is, no doubt, a
fact that, in narrative, description, and so forth, he was
merely a " standard " man, not always quite so careful
as that standard requires, but by no means always so
careless as the critical " populace " will have him
to be.

Of the three younger members of the Seven, Byron Byron
was, usually, eighteenth century or nothing in his prose ;
and Keats wrote too little, except in jocular or passionate
privacy, to need much consideration here. On the other
hand, Shelley's prose, elaborately descriptive as some of it
is, and enthusiastic as some of the rest may be, is decidedly
nearer to the standard than to the ornate kind a fact
which perhaps had something to do with Matthew Arnold's
apparently fantastic preference of it over the verse. This
opinion may possibly disappoint some readers, and shock
others. But I am not afraid that any one who knows the
History of Prosody will question my appreciation of
Shelley ; and the opinion is the result of many years'
reading, constantly refreshed. In the Defence of Poetry,
in the Platonic translations, and in the descriptive parts of
the letters, there are, of course, passages of the first beauty
as prose. But (and this is not in the least wonderful
when we remember that, when he wanted Polyhymnia, she
was always ready for him in her own singing robes) it
will constantly be found to be what we may call super-
poetised Burke antithetical and oratorical in general
scheme. In a most careful recent scrutiny I have found

of Ellangowan. "

I have bracketed and italicised one clause because it is of the nature of
a parenthetic aside, descending purposely to merely colloquial rhythm.

2g8 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

but a very few passages which distinctly class themselves
as of the newer type, such as this :

There is no mistake about that ; but what follows ?

These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced
principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most
enlarged imagination ; and the state of mind produced by them is at
war with every base desire.

Is there any fault to be found with this ? None ; but
it does not pretend to the more composite rhythm, and
though you can " foot it " well enough, it lends itself much
more naturally to the " section " division of standard prose.
And so, I think, generally, if not always.

The minors : Of those who attain not to the Seven, Campbell is in
prose merely an inferior Southey ; but Moore, who has
been a stumbling-block to the majority of critics in relation
to his verse, occupies a rather ambiguous position in rela-
tion to his prose. The Epicurean contains things (examples
will be given presently) which deserve by no means low
rank as specimens of elaborate rhythm, and in particular
possess a most singular resemblance to some passages of
Landor. But it is late ; l its relations to the verse Alciphron
are not very certainly unravelled ; 2 and, excellent as his
general prose-writing is, Moore belongs, as a whole, to the
standard class. Of Landor we must, of course, speak at
great length : he belongs to the definite group of the new

1 The Prefatory "Letter" is indeed dated "Cairo, June 19, 1800," but
of course this (written in character) is merely one of the literary supercheries
fashionable at the time. He appears actually to have begun the subject, as a
poem, twenty years later, July 25, 1820 ; but found a difficulty in " managing
the minor details of a story so as to be clear without growing prosaic," dropped
it, and started it again in prose. It was not published till 1827.

8 I mean that we do not know whether this, not published till twelve years
later still (1839), consists of some or all of the original verse of 1820; or
whether other passages of the prose, now found in The Epicurean, were
originally written in verse.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 299

prose-men. But, before coming to them, a few specimens
of Moore and Coleridge must be given, and Moore himself
must be dealt with first.

Moore's ornate prose is, in fact, curiously transitional,
more so indeed than Shelley's. At one moment it is as
of a slightly more imaged Burke ; at another it reminds
you of De Quincey or Landor. For instance, the admir-
able image which I have italicised in the following (I dare
say some one knows where he got it, but I don't) does not
remove the general late-eighteenth-century character of
the passage :

But, even in sleep, the same faces continued to haunt me ; and a The
dream, so distinct and vivid as to leave behind it the impression of Epicurean.
reality, thus presented itself to my mind. I found myself suddenly
transported to a wide and desolate plain, where nothing appeared to
breathe, or move, or live. The -very sky that hung above it looked pale
and extinct, giving the idea, not of darkness, but of light that had
become dead; and had that whole region been the remains of some
older world left broken up and sunless, it could not have presented
an aspect more quenched and desolate.

That is good ; but as a composition, as a symphony, it
has too much of the old pendulum swing the rhythm
does not progress or gyrate. This is somewhat better :

When I sailed from Alexandria, the inundation of the Nile was at
its full. The whole valley of Egypt lay covered with its flood ; and
as, looking around me in the light of the setting sun, I saw shrines,
palaces, and monuments encircled by the waters, I could almost
fancy that I beheld the sinking island of Atlantis on the last evening
its temples were visible above the wave.

Here the progression is better, and there is less mere
see-saw ; but the individual feet, though separable without
much difficulty, do not mark themselves sufficiently ; the
prose is still mainly sectional.

Best of all, I think, is this where the rhythm, while
not transgressing into the poetical, is both much more
marked and much more symphonic :

300 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Here at last the writer has got into the new region,
though he may carry about him some traces of the old. 1
But into that region had already burst, though t the
records of the feat long remained unknown, a greater than
Moore.
Return to It is most curious, even if it can hardly be called

sur P r i sm g> to see > as we turn over tne leaves of Mr. Ernest

Coleridge's pious and most welcome recoveries, how the
attempt to portray natural beauty exactly, to " count the
streaks of the tulip " and assort the colours of the sky-
value, which had been so long forbidden even to the poet,
requires and brings with it, when the prose-writer essays
the task, an immediate reinforcement to sound as well
as to sight. Still in the eighteenth century, somewhere
between November 1799 and July 1800, we find this
entry (an entire one) : 2

Now I hope no one will be so thoughtless as to
ejaculate, " Oh ! Coleridge was always thinking, of these
effects for his verse ; that is just a note for poetry." But

1 The strong infusion of Ionic a minore (w w ) or third paeon (w w w)

may here, as so often elsewhere, be noticed. It is one of the not very
numerous footholds that we get in half-wading, half-swimming through this
doubtful region.

2 Anima Poetae, p. 10.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 301

it is not verse, 1 and whether it is poetry or not depends
upon a quarrel which is not at the moment ours. It is
perfectly genuine prose rhythm, not verse at all. But it
is prose rhythm of something like the highest quality.
One little point, the omission of the copula and the use
of a kind of apposition at " paleness, wan affright," is
something that you will find practically never in Augustan
prose, constantly in the nineteenth century ; and it gives
a rhythmical heightening of the most definite and peculiar
kind. On December 19, 1800, he writes: 2

Here " partook not of the motion " is older-fashioned,
in diction, but the rest is new, and all is so in the rhythm.
And this, let it be remembered, is more than twenty years
before the deliberate colour-and-rhythm school announces
itself with De Quincey and Wilson and Landor ; more
than forty before a certain " Graduate of Oxford " wrote.

And so, after all but a century's waiting, Coleridge's
position as psychagogue is vindicated in prose, as it has
been from the first in poetry and in criticism.

But we cannot leave the vindication at this point,
especially as, though more than a decade and a half has
passed since the documents were published, I at least
have never seen much notice taken of them. Astonish-
ingly Ruskinian, even to the point of frequent but
cunningly carried-off intermixture of blank verse, is the
following : 3

A drizzling rain. [ Heavy | masses | of shapeless | vapour | upon

1 "In twi | light an im | age of pale | ness " is. But as one has so constantly,
but always victoriously, to retort the precedent and subsequent clauses
entirely preclude such arrangement for the whole, even of this short piece.

2 Anima Poetae, p. 12. 3 Ibid. p. 34. Dated October 21, 1803.

302 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Here, of course, you can separate, if you choose, not a
few iambic decasyllabics :

O ! the perpetual forms of Borrowdale
The vale is narrowed by the mist and cloud
The birds are singing in the tender rain

perhaps one or two more. But they do not, in their
context, force themselves on the ear in any unpleasant
sing-song, and they easily join with what comes before, or
what comes after, in definite prose groups. On the other
hand, the word-values are arranged with evident cunning.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 303

There are many trochees, ditrochees, and even larger
groups, in which the vowel-music is most carefully con-
trasted (" slanting pillars," " brightest yellows," " deepest
crimsons "), and the sharp repetition commonest of tricks
now, but a rare and very dubious licence then ! of
" white bright vapour " is noticeable. In " the brightest
yellows | with the deepest | crimsons " (amphibrach,
trochee, third paeon, trochee), I almost dare to say we
glimpse one of our panthers, a common - form prose
combination corresponding to a verse. Note, too, the
familiar-unfamiliar word " woolpacks," the parts of which
might have no sense at all it is so perfectly expressive, in
sound, of what it means. There are some, of course, who
will quarrel with " consubstantiate " and " determinate."
Not I ; for there has been so much appeal to the pure
sense that this intellectual vocabulary comes as an
agreeable set-off; and the objection of homoeoteleuton,
which might otherwise be sustainable, is to be met by the
answer that good pronouncers do not make a rhyme here,
the a being fully sounded in the verb and slightly slurred
in the adjective.

On the other hand, if any one would like a contrast
passage where the observation and the reflection have got
the better of the prose-making, he will find it at p. 1 1 2. 1
But he will also find many (I subjoin some references) 2
where science has not defeated or defrauded art. And
one I must give at length, because it seems to show that,
as indeed we might expect, his beloved and rather over-
extolled Jeremy Taylor was sometimes in S. T. C.'s mind
when he wrote thus. Sometimes for in the passage
previously given I hear little of Jeremy.

1 The opening passage of chap. iv. (January 15, 1805) dealing with such
a tempting subject as the halo of the moon.

2 Pages 1 8, 43, 184, 212.

3 " As " is not in the original ; but it or something like it seems to me
necessary. It would not spoil the rhythm at all, but would simply extend
the amphibrach before into a second paeon.

304 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

General
descriptive
character of
these early
passages.

That last sentence, at least the italicised portion, is
Taylorian (adjusted to a nineteenth - century key, of
course), or nothing. But elsewhere I can see no indebted-
ness, except of the most general kind, and an immense
discovery or recovery. " Blessed is he who first sees the
morning star," says Coleridge somewhere in this very book.
Yea, and more blessed he who can not only see it, but
catch and reproduce the flash of its light and the notes of
its singing.

Now almost if not quite all these passages those
from Moore as well as those from Coleridge and those
that we might (and may easily) add from Shelley are, of
course, description. I have not the slightest intention of
ignoring or masking the fact ; on the contrary, I have
already drawn, do now once more draw, and may perhaps
somewhat weary the reader by drawing, again and again
in the future, his attention to it. There may be some
fated and metaphysical connection between colour and

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 305

rhythm here : there certainly is a pretty obvious one
between the attentions devoted to th# two kinds of form.
And though we shall by no means find that this link is a
fetter, that the more elaborate rhythmist in prose is, in
the old Scots legal term, " thirled " inevitably bound and
restricted to mere word-painting, we shall undoubtedly
find that a very large proportion of his most successful
and delightful achievements belong to this department.
And, for yet other reasons than those given, it was
natural that this should be so. Nothing had been more
characteristic of the new poetry than its efforts and its
successes in this way. Pitt's well-known remark on The
Lay of the Last Minstrel (a remark which might have
been even better devoted to The Ancient Mariner], that he
could have conceived of such effects as being reached by
a painter, but not by a poet, is the ^77^77, the chance but
final expression and formulation, of the general sense on
this head. When the new prose-makers took up the
task of showing how near to verse prose could go, they
naturally did it in part materia.

To these, and especially to Coleridge, let all honour, The three
therefore, be due ; but there is nothing very wrong in the
general opinion which assigns to De Quincey, Landor, and
Wilson, chronologically speaking, if not also in other ways,
the place of the First Three in the instauration of musical
prose. To " place " them in respect of exact date and
possible-probable originality would be the task of a thesis-
writer. Let us only here remind the reader who may
take no further notice of the facts or work them out,
just as he pleases that Wilson and De Quincey were
friends at the Lakes and in Edinburgh * very early as
early at least as 1814; that the latter had been, seven
years earlier, under Coleridge's influence ; that Blackwood,
in which both wrote, appeared first three years later
(1817), but did not for some time display the new
style ; that the Confessions of an Opium Eater appeared
in the London in 1821, and the first volumes of the

1 They had been contemporaries at Oxford, but had not there known each
other.

306 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Imaginary Conversations three years later again (1824).
Landor, though intimate with Southey, had little to do
with the other Lakers, or with his " mono-Gebirist "
admirer De Quincey ; and he was, in fact, out of England
entirely, or almost entirely, from 1811 to 1832. His
development must have been independent, as was probably
also De Quincey's own except for the all-impregnating
influence of " S. T. C." Wilson may have taken more
directly from De Quincey himself. But, on the whole, it
is best, as always, to regard them as mouthpieces, each in
his own sufficiently individual and original way, of a
tendency of the time as setting sails of their own cut,
and steering their own course, under the influence of the
same Time-Spirit.

De Quincey. I do not, however, see any reason for depriving De
Quincey of seniority, if not seignioralty in a certain sense.
Since the late Mr. Henley thought fit to attack him, he has
perhaps lost something, with les jeunes, of the favour which
he used specially to possess with them. But, as every one
who really knew Henley is well aware, his " black beasts "
were chameleonic creatures, who took their colour from
accidents and circumstances, rather than from anything
essential to themselves. And I have even recently seen
De Quincey described as " decadent," which ought to be a
passport to fresh favour nowadays. 2 At any rate, there
can be absolutely no chance of making any solid fight
against his claim to be a great and a very early master of
our later rhythmed prose. The Suspiria have no need
of apology or argument : their powers are self-validating
to all competent and serious appreciation. Moreover, it
is not in De Quincey's case, as it is in some others, un-
certain whether the achievement was, or was not, un-
conscious and more or less accidental. De Quincey, as

1 De Quincey's characteristic way of summing up his own alfeged belief
that he was the only person who read Gebir at its appearance. The term is
open to cavil from the point of view of verbal criticism.

2 I have myself, I think, dealt pretty faithfully with his general
faults and merits in an essay originally contributed to Macmillari's Magazine,
and reprinted with Essays in English Literature (London, 1890; Third
Edition, 1896). But I there said very little about this particular part of
his genius.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 307

is well known, gave himself up wholly and solely to prose,
in a fashion so rare as to be almost unique. Not only
did he almost wholly avoid verse, but I fancy that he did
not care for it very much as verse. 1 The decision, and in
fact the acrimony, of his views, on the vexed question of
the connection of verse and poetry, must be well known to
any one who knows him at all ; his contempt of merely
plain prose likewise. He exhausted even his great
powers of ingenious scholasticism, and landed himself in
hopeless contradictions, by trying to construct a sort of
j#/r-rhetoric (different from eloquence) which should be
the perfection of deliberate artistry in writing.

But he certainly recked his own rede. How early the
wonderful harmonies, which he never gave to the public
till he was actually " at the middle of the road of our life,"
came into his ears it is impossible to say, and quite idle
to attempt to see amid the luminous haze, but essentially
hazy luminosity, of his own statements. If it was at
Oxford, why, then, the place fitted the time and the man,
as too seldom happens. But we shall disregard all this,
and simply analyse the famous passages, hackneyed as
they are, or ought to be. Some of these divisions and
quantifications are, as far as I am concerned, at least
thirty years old, and I think a good deal older ; and,
though something like them may have been tried by
others in the interval, I do not know it.

One single sentence, which I have used constantly as a
perfect type in miniature of rhythmed prose, may serve as
a beginning :

1 Compare the curious passage cited inf. and almost any of his criticisms
of poets, especially the (generally not unsympathetic) "Shelley" and the
almost ludicrously inadequate " Keats."

2 If anybody prefers it, either from Stevenson's dislike of split words or

for another reason, I should have no violent objection to "if they were

308 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Specimen
phrases and
passages,

with analysis
and comment.

Nothing not more than fifty years' familiarity with its
text, and thirty with its analysis ; not even all but a
couple of decades of such not endearing use 1 as may be
made in lectures and tutorials has lessened, and therefore
I think I may say that nothing is ever likely to lessen, the
charm of this phrase to me, or its infinite variety of appeal.
Short as it is, it is a kind of magazine of the secrets of its
kind. In the first place, it illustrates, supereminently,
that doctrine of Variety itself which has been, and must
be, so often impressed. At first hearing, a hasty ear
might prompt the kindred tongue to say, " Oh ! but that is
1 emmetric ' ! it breaks the primal law." 2 Examine it, and
you will find nothing of the kind. There is not so much
as a blank verse in it, even of the cunningly masked kind
which has been noticed in Coleridge and others, and will
be noticed in Ruskin and others still. There are, indeed,
fragments of blank verse

No man | could read | their story
Found filled | with perish [ing dreams |

which would fit themselves, with Shakspearian ease, to
complete contexts in the metre. But this is just what De
Quincey avoids. The sections which precede and follow
them suggest quite different rhythms, and yet blend with
them harmoniously according to the law of prose
harmony.

Again, note the absence of the non-metrical corre-
spondence which we have detected as one great note of
Augustan prose and its immediate successors. The
sections are sections ; but they are not broken into couples
and batches ; they serpentine on continuously. Then,
too, the conclusions tell the same tale. " Nor subtle,"

ever j seen " | (dochmiac and monosyllable instead of pseon and iamb), or to

" would be neither | sweet " | (pseon and monosyllable instead of anapaest and
iamb). But I think the scansion in text runs better ; and, as I have said,
word-splitting has no terrors for me, though I believe rather less in it than I
used to do for prose scansion, while I am more convinced than ever of its
desirableness in verse.

1 Usus concinnat amorem very often, no doubt, but hardly this use.

2 V. sup, p. i.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 309

an amphibrach with the amphibrach's trochaic close-
suggestion. " Their story," the same. But " delirium "
lengthens this out to a paeon, and so at once varies and
completes the sound effect. Nor are the " beautiful
syllables," the " beautiful letters," found wanting. There
are no " strange " words, unless " delirium " be called so :
the vocabulary is quite ordinary ; but the vowel music,
assisted and qualified by the consonants and the word
lengths, is unerring. " Sw^t," " nor" " sbtle " ; " man"
" read" " story " ; "perishing dreams" " wrecks of forgotten
delirium" in all these the marvellous power of contrast,
grouped and united under the general rhythm of the
sentence, is displayed. And when you have appreciated
the details you have only to read the passage again as a
whole, and rejoice once more, undisturbed by analysis or
anatomy, in its total result as entire and perfect.

In the very next sentence 1 there is an awful example
of the uncertainty of De Quincey's self-criticism. For he
speaks of Our Lady of Sighs as having a "dilapidated
turban." Grant that perhaps, ninety years ago, " dilapi-
dated " had not got into its present state of half-comic
vulgarising. But at any time it would have been the
wrong word for " turban " ; though no doubt some idea of
the towered crown of Cybele (which he was afterwards to
use deliberately and admirably in regard to the third
sister) may have originated and (as a conception, though
not as a phrase) excused it.

I have said that De Quincey's greatest passages are The Dream-
all, more or less, hackneyed ; but we certainly can exercise 5^^^^
selection upon them here. The famous " Bishop of chief quarries.
Beauvais ! " peroration of the Joan of Arc he might
himself have called " rhetoric " or " eloquence " in different
moods or phases of his juggling fits with those terms ;
but be it either, it has little for us. It is noisy, and blares
which rhythmical prose should never do, though verse
sometimes may. The moment that one note in prose so
overpowers the next that you cannot attend to it, the

1 The passage, of course, comes from the description of the second of
" Our Ladies of Sorrow," Mater Stispiriorum.

310 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

error of oratorical style, and the Augustan system, returns.
So, too, by no means very much in the equally famous
Mail Coach (except the Dream-Fugue itself) comes up to
our standard. The most perfect example, I think, is
before the bravura part begins:

_ i

Some longer passages from the Dream-Fugue itself
must be analysed presently ; for it is from this and from
the Suspiria (by no means so much from the original or
even the supplemented Confessions] that De Quincey's
triumphs in our way come.

Elaborate Indeed the total bulk of such passages is by no means

rhythm by no so large as an oblivious, or perhaps originally not very

means often *

aimed at else- industrious, reader (inferring from the constant reference
where. J.Q ^g au thor in this particular capacity) may think.

The greater part by far something like ninety-five per
cent I should say of De Quincey's voluminous com-
positions are written in the " standard " variety observing
great precision, and achieving remarkably constant success,
wherever he does not digress, or rather divagate, into one
of his fits of rigmarole and horse-play. His longest,
most elaborate, and most ambitious Essays, such as that
on The Casars, are entirely written in this style ; and even
the justly famous passage where he elaborates the dreadful
inevitableness of Roman tyranny suggested by Gibbon,
has hardly more perhaps indeed a good deal less
accompaniment of positive rhythm than Gibbon would

1 Another excellent example of the way in which positive metre is made
in prose to yield its legitimate, and withhold its illegitimate influence, may
be taken from the opening here. " Moonlight and the first," " tremblings
of the dawn," are metrically identical ; but "timid" between them staves off
any combined metrical effect, and switches the course of the rhythm into due
prose run.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 311

have given. 1 He does, to some extent, in his own work,
honestly carry out the sound artistic doctrine somewhat
inconsistently expounded in his Rhetoric Essay, that
ornament should never be super-added, that it should
grow naturally out of, or with, the development of the
subject. It is true that, with his almost uncurbed dis-
cursiveness, such development may at any moment take
any turn ; but it is by no means often that he allows it
to take this one. On the contrary, he is not seldom
almost as oratorical as Bolingbroke.

It has, I have no doubt, occurred to other students its connection
of elaborate rhythmical prose that curiously large pro- Wlth dream -
portions of the most famous examples of it are concerned
with dreams ; and I should not suppose that many of
them have failed to anticipate the following suggestion of
the reason. Dreams themselves are nothing if not
rhythmical ; their singular fashion of progression (it is
matter of commonest remark) floats the dreamer over the
most irrational and impossible transitions and junctures
(or rather breaches) of incident and subject, without jolt
or jar. They thus combine of their own nature and to
the invariable experience of those who are fortunate enough
to have much to do with them the greatest possible
variety with the least possible disturbance. Now this
combination, as we have been faithfully putting forth, is
the very soul the quintessence, the constituting form
and idea of harmonious prose. Unfortunately it is not
every one who has the faculty of producing this combi-
nation in words ; fortunately there are some who have.
We noticed how the dream-subject presented itself in
Moore ; we are seeing how it is almost indissolubly
connected with De Quincey's greatest performances ; it
will be found to be the same with Landor, with Kingsley,
with others. And, by a curious and convincing conversion,
we shall further discover that in certain great passages of
Ruskin, of Pater, and of yet others, which are not directly

1 It is worth noting, to his credit, that De Quincey, who follows Coleridge
so often (the " Rhetoric v. Eloquence " thimble-rigging itself seems to have
come from one of the innumerable sports of the Estesian brain), does not follow
him in the depreciation of Gibbon's style.

312 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

connected with actual dreams in subject, the dream-
character impresses itself, all the same, on their style.

By combining the words " dream " and " fugue " in
one- instance, and by using the latter term not infrequently
in his critical and preceptist remarks upon the matter, De
Quincey has shown how thorough was his mastery of the
subject in theory as well as in practice. For the fugue
in the same way, as opposed to the tune, requires, I am
told, large variety with easy transition. But the fugue
part of the matter applies chiefly to the subject, and to
the general rhythmical, however intricate, connection.
Except in such uses of the same word as we traced in
Hooker and others, I doubt whether you can find much 1
recurrence of similar rhythmical motives of any bulk in
English prose, unless identical in actual wording, like De
Quincey's own Consul Romanus. But the qualities * of
pure sound that remain to be analysed and marshalled ;
the variety, the transition, by undulation and slide instead
of by breakage and jar, or at least severance and stop ;
and lastly the all-embracing progression of rhythm
these, though are by no means wholly independent of the
subject, are not primarily derived from it in origin, and
can be separated from it in result.

In the first long instance we shall take 2 there is a
certain peculiarity. This elaborate prose, for reasons not
very recondite, does not often take to the lighter vein.
In connection with what has just been said, it may be
noticed that dreams themselves are almost always serious :
the most pyramidally comic things occur in them, but
never present themselves lightly. 3 De Quincey, however,
has at least one passage which is not mere horseplay,
though it contains something of this comic enormity of
fact, and which is beautifully rhythmical. To a very
green modern taste it may be spoilt by the " sensibility "

1 I must emphasise "much." I have endeavoured occasionally to indicate
wider recurrences of foot- and group-motive, and I dare say any one who
follows me will find more.

2 From the earlier part of The English Mail Coach not the Vision of
Sudden Death, or the Dream-Fugue founded on it.

3 You wake laughing at them ; but you laugh at them because you wake.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 313

or " sentimentality " which came up first in France in the
Grand Monarch's time, was made European by Sterne and
caricatured by Mackenzie and the Germans, which is
flagrant (or diluvial) in Landor himself, and which was
finally turned out by Heine and Thackeray. But this
hardly affects the form. For the solution of the
" crocodile " the reader must go to the context. It is in
its origin one of the worst of De Quincey's " rigmarole "
foolings, but he subdues it, as a dream - motive, not
unworthily.

3 i4 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Here, not only is the composition, both in dream and
description, extremely well done, but the rhythmical
setting is consummate and almost unique. Only that
ever unlucky word " female " jars seriously ; though he had
doubtless better have avoided the too close juxtaposition of
" chorus " and " choral." The always-to-be-wanted-and-
welcomed variety is present in quite extraordinary
measure, and the truth of the Dionysian doctrine has
hardly ever been better demonstrated than in the bold
use of

Roses and Fannies,

Fannies and roses,

which, from the difference of the supporting clauses on
each side, and the possibility of treating each apparently
dactylic-trochaic syzygy as differently arranged in itself,
does not violate the conditions of prose harmony in
the least.

The skill with which a " blank "

Amongst the lovely households of the deer

is avoided by the specification of " roe " is notable ; the
clause-items that follow are all harmonious in themselves,
and all harmonise together ; and the more pedestrian and
oratorical close warranted in these conditions by the
contrasting seriousness of the sense has still so'mething
that differentiates it from the usual eighteenth-century
tone of even the best similar passages earlier. 1

The Dream-Fugue, with its motive of tragedy just

1 This passage is also a very good exploring ground for definite foot- and
foot-group motives.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 315

averted, is naturally of a different tone and texture from
this ; and it sometimes comes near the loadstone-rock of
bombast. But it seldom actually touches that rock, nor
ever clings to it ; and the mastery of the rhythming is
really wonderful. I should like, if I thought the reader
would stand it, to scan the whole of the eleven pages as
a pendant to the Browne magnum ; and I rather think
that a considerable portion ought to be given. But some
general remarks must in any case be afforded. The
special thing, noticeable once more, is the extraordinary
dexterity with which improper metrification is avoided.
I suppose in the overture (" to be given tumultuosissima-
mente"} he designedly overstepped, or at least trespassed
on, the line, and accordingly it seems to me much the
worst part of the whole. But elsewhere that touch which
we have observed above the awmetring by insertion or
omission as well as by juxtaposition of contrasted rhythm
is omnipresent, as well as the sleight of pause or
emphasis which prevents a blank or other verse line from
offending the ear by completed metre, though the incom-
plete suggestion contributes to the general harmony.

The second passage of this fugue that of the frigate The
and line-of-battle ship, and still more the fourth the agam
chariot-race with the news of Waterloo through the
Minster and its Campo Santo are the longest and most
sustained tours de force of this remarkable composition ;
and (except that the tumultuosissimamente is perhaps
rather too much present throughout) they are astonish-
ingly successful as diploma-pieces. But for exhibition of
the quieter but intenser magic of the style, they must, I
think, yield to not a few sentences, and even paragraphs,
from the Suspiria, besides that magnificent one already
quoted and analysed. Browne himself might have
written some of those which follow, and I do not know
that they are any the worse for not having been more
fully worked up.

3i6 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

This is quite quiet ; but it is quietly consummate.
Let anybody duly consider the little causes of the rhythm ;
the contrasted structure of the members ; the appearance,
after no epithet for " heaven " or " earth," of " secret "
before " rivers " ; the fourfold repetition of " by " and its
sudden dropping at " heraldries " ; the procession in bulk
of " heraldries " and " hieroglyphics " the dactyl to the
dochmiac and of the simple trochee " darkness " to the
paeon plus anapaest of " on the tablets of the brain " ; and
he will find that they are scarcely fortuitous.

The often dwelt-on sentence may be the finest, but 'the
three sisters are not so unequally parted, despite the
touches of sensiblerie with their almost invariable, and very
curious, vulgarising of rhythmical effect.

ever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead,
woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in
Heaven^

1 If only he had stopped at " ever " ! or had compressed the following
gush into "so often heard tottering overhead" after "feet."

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 317

But then it goes off into ordinary stuff about blind
beggars and their daughters ; while the reader will have
already noticed how hurtfully superfluous is the earlier
italicised passage. But the remainder is admirable. The
rhythm is mainly undulatory a common but by no means
universal mode and great play is made by lengthening
or shortening of clause-ends " tears," " faces," " com-
forted " ; " litanies," " organs," " clouds."

The second sister, our Lady of Sighs, who is the Sibylla
Palmifera of the great sentence, has not only nothing else
so palmary in her description, but nothing of the absolutely
first class. But, on the contrary, the third has an entire
paragraph, all but an entire page, which is, for rhythmical
maestria, hardly inferior to anything of the same length
in our literature :

1 Few better examples of the diminuendo can be found than this dochmiac,
pseon, amphibrach, monosyllable five, four, three, one. A dissyllabic foot
might be inserted, but is rendered unnecessary to some extent by what has
been often noticed the trochaic suggestion of the amphibrach.

318 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

There is here hardly a fault in rhythm or sound ; if
there be any they are very small. Some might prefer
" concealed," " obscured," " masked " even, for the first
" hidden," and " earthquake " or some other word for the
first " tempest." " A s with " might be a little better than
" and with." But this is nothing. One dominant of the
rhythm is certainly from our point of view l Ionic a
minore, or its double, third paeon : " But the third sis-" ;
" who is also " ; " and her eyes, ris ing so high, might " ;
" or for vespers " ; " or for flowing " ; " the defier " ; " is
the nation " ; and so on. But the actual feet are kept
apart (only once come two together), and the syllable
that intervenes (" sis-ter ") between the first two occur-
rences just breaks the metre while suggesting the rhythm
in the due prose style. Once you can make a blank, but
otherwise complete, octosyllabic distich

For noon of day, or noon of night,
For ebbing or for flowing tide ;

1 I have not "given a handle" by opening the scansion anapsestically.
This is necessitated by "sis-ter." But the cross-scansion or "counterpoint-
ing" of sections is even more important in prose- than in verse-" prosody."

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 319

and once or twice also l something like a blank decasyllabic.
But in prose you would never read either that way ; it
falls naturally as divided above, and so, once more, breaks
metre while keeping rhythm, and allowing a sort of aura
of metre itself to remain. And the Ionics scarcely do
more than rise now and then, like bubbles in mineral
spring- water, through the varied yet always harmonically
adjusted foot -combinations. I do not believe that the
piece can be beaten, as a concerted piece, from the purely
artistic-rhythmical point of view, though of course you
might raise any amount of cavil at it from others.

Some, not merely of " the general." have a preference,
I believe, for the opening of Savannah-la- Mar. It is
fine, but seems to me to infringe, more than that last quoted,
on poetic diction-arrangement, and therefore, beautiful as
it is, to be slightly inferior. But it shall be duly scanned
and given :

1 " Her kingdom is not large or else no flesh
Could live."

320 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The Auto-
biography.
De Quincey's
relation to
poetry.

There are a few, but not many, or very striking,
attempts in the same vein scattered among the earlier
chapters of the Autobiography ; but the greater part of that
interesting (if most labyrinthine) rigmarole is written in
simple narrative fashion. It contains, however, one
curious passage, which is not without bearing on De
Quincey's general practice in elaborate prose a passage
in which, while frankly acknowledging doubts whether
his natural vocation lay towards poetry, he continues :
" Well indeed I knew, and I know, that had I chosen to
enlist among the soi-disant poets of the day amongst
those, I mean, who, by mere force of talent and mimetic
skill, contrive to sustain the part of a poet, in a scenical
sense and with a scenical effect I also could have won
such laurels as are gained by such merit," with more to
the same effect, covered indeed by Wordsworthian pre-
texts about spontaneity and the like, but simply amounting
to the " sour grapes," the " I could an I would," etc.,
which De Quincey's own relentless psychology would
have been the first to unmask in another person. Enough
has been given to vindicate his true position, and it may
be repeated, with no unfairness, that in his case what might
(but I think never would) have made fair, and more than
fair, poetry in another, was diverted to make not many
but great, and on the whole original, examples of rhythmed
prose.

And certainly it was well so ; for we have generally
had in England, thank Heaven ! plenty of good poets,
and do not want doubtful ones ; while we had, in De
Quincey's time, constant and pressing need of an instaura-
tion of ornate prose-writing. Whether he was actually

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 321

the man who " fished the murex up," or took the hint from
that everlasting murex-finder, though not always murex-
user, S. T. C., I have said that I do not know ; that I do
not believe it possible to be certain ; and that I do not care.
Between him and Landor the prize certainly lies ; for
though the connections between De Quincey and Wilson
(still with a joint throw-back to Coleridge) were early and
intimate, I do not think that " Christopher " was at all
likely to be the discoverer. At any rate, in the examples
given, and in others, we have what had practically been
unknown in English since Thomas Burnet the muse
Polyhymnia busying herself once more with prose. She
has been fairly busy ever since ; and very busy, at
increasing speeds, for the last seventy years, and again for
the last forty. She has lately, after the unfortunate
fashion of the day, turned her business into companies,
with very limited individual liability ; and the shareholders
sometimes regard the early pioneers in the business, De
Quincey perhaps more particularly, as not merely effete
and rococo personages, but impudent interlopers, diverting
the attention of the public from " us youth." Of these
we may have briefly to reason now and again ; with them,
never. Here is a re-discovered art ; a lamp dug out of a
tomb, found burning, and used to rekindle other lamps
long disused and unlit ; a " British shell " (as poor Collins,
putting immortal poetry in a mortal, and most deservedly
mortal lingo, has it) which, catching from older examples
the undying melody of the ocean, revives it for fresh sets
of willing ears. Let anybody who will, cavil ; let us bow
the knee and hear. 1

1 If I have quoted and analysed nothing from the voluminous supplements
to the older editions of De Quincey, published by Professor Masson (Works
of De Quincey, 14 vols., 1889-90); Mr. Hogg, Uncollected Works of De
Quincey (2 vols., 1890); and Dr. Japp, Posthumous Works of De Quincey
(2 vols., 1891), it is from no want of original acquaintance with them at the
time of their appearance, or failure to renew that acquaintance for this special
purpose. They contain hardly anything suitable to it, except a pretty posi-
tive confirmation of what might be expected, in the absence from the additional
fragments of the Suspiria of anything like the elaboration of the completed
work. Incidentally, the pieces in English hexameter bad even of its bad
kind such as Anna Louisa (Posthumous Works, i. 94-99) show how essen-
tially De Quincey was a master of prose rhythm, and of that only.

322 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Wilson. The Nodes Ambrosianae> and the other works of their
author, have, for many years, been so little popular, and
the trend of modern criticism has been so much against
Wilson, that I dare say I shall be found fault with for
admitting him at all. But a critic who goes by popularity
does not deserve to exist ; and a person who, not going
by popularity, cannot see Christopher North's great,
though greatly flawed, merits may be a critic, but is
himself a hopelessly flawed one. Whether he was a
pupil or whether (for the status pupillaris is not one in
which one can imagine Christopher, at least consciously,
sojourning) he was merely a fellow-initiate with De Quincey,
it is certain that the defects of the latter are greatly
magnified and multiplied in him, and the merits much
more fitfully present. A finer taste might have left some
things of De Quincey's out altogether, and have omitted
more from their actual places ; but it is difficult to
reconcile the existence of any taste at all with the mere
writing let alone the allocation of many passages of
Christopher. De Quincey cannot always sustain himself at
the required height ; but it is the exception when Wilson
does not almost immediately drop from any point that
he may have for a moment reached. De Quincey does,
as a rule, recognise the great principle " Red ink for
ornament, and black for use." Wilson splashes and blots
his carmine about with the least, or with no, provocation.
Yet I do not see how the following passage can be left
out, though I shall not think it necessary to give another :

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 323

There are some obvious blemishes here. The editorial
" we " jars throughout the idea of a committee or com-
mission seeing dreams, sleeping in a sort of Great Bed of

324 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Ware on the moors, and simultaneously opening their
eyes, jeopardises the whole thing. " Than aught that
trills from earthly instrument " is not only blank verse, 1
not only poetic diction, but poetic lingo. " Order " and
" ordered," though probably a mere oversight, make an
unlucky one. One or two other knots may one find in
the reed ; but it is a reed for all that, and one of great
smoothness and beauty, waving and flowering by its own
river in no unlovely fashion, and capable of giving no
unlovely sound. When it is remembered that there are
hundreds of passages like it (though more " knotty ") scat-
tered for thirty years in writings which had a much larger
circulation than most of De Quincey's, and were collected
long before his, the importance of Wilson as an influence
and pattern will surely not require much more argument.
But it is part of our business to note that though this
passage from the Recreations is continued in almost as
high a key, the mode changes to something much more
like the oratorical : Burke, not Browne or Taylor, is once
more the pattern. 2 In fact, all these pioneers of polyphonic
prose are apt, and naturally enough apt, to slip into the
harangue, and in so doing to revert to the old alterna-
tion of antithesis and balance, instead of the continuous
meander of true rhythmical prose that is not oratory.
Landor-. But probably the majority of readers at the present

da >"> if thev take an y interes t at all in this matter, will
" think long " till they come to Landor. For my own
part, I should not, as I have already remarked, take much
account of the comparative unpopularity of De Quincey,
and the almost superlative unpopularity of Wilson, at
this moment. Times go wrong, and they go right again ;
and it is the business of the critic to correct if he can,
and if not, to neglect, their aberration. But there is not
the slightest question (putting the mere present -moment
quite aside) as to Landor's eminence, earliness, and
intrinsic interest in this respect. Whatever controversy

1 Salvable, however : see scansion.

2 Please observe that this is said of the (not-quoted) continuation, not of
the passage itself.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 325

there may be about his critical and intellectual power ;
however abysmal may be the gulf between those who
consider him a real and choice humourist, and those
who discern in him only a ghastly minus quantity of
the humorous ; whether it is, or is not, blasphemy to
call his tenderness the tenderness of a more refined
Mr. Tupman, and his high - breeding the deportment
of a nobler Mr. Turveydrop the magnificence of his
more than occasional phrase, and the beauty of his
frequent concerted pieces of prose harmony, stand out of,
and far above, all reasonable dispute. And with him,
too, we have the intensely interesting addition of the fact
that he was a poet, and no mean or minor poet either ;
whereas (as we have seen) De Quincey was not a poet
at all ; and (as it was unnecessary to say till this moment)
Wilson, though he wrote a good deal of verse, was a
minor poet almost to minimity. In fact, the conjunction
had never been seen since Greville and Donne in the
earlier seventeenth century ; for in Browne and Taylor
the poetic faculty was not much more prominent than in
Wilson himself. Nay, since the revival of polyphony in
prose, although the brocard that good poets are good
prose writers has generally held, 1 practice in two harmonies,
at full stretch of both, has been the exception rather than
the rule. Among Landor's own contemporaries, Shelley,
an exquisite prose writer, is, as we have seen, rather
severe in his rhythm. Among his successors, Ruskin
and Pater prove the rule in the other way : the one in
his failure, the other in his abstinence. Swinburne and
William Morris go, indeed, with Landor ; but under
restrictions, which we shall have to consider when we
come to them.

Of Landor, however, it may be said that he was not The relations
only master utriusque linguae, but master of both, in a and his-ose
somewhat curious and a very interesting way. We
never (as we so often do with poets as different as, for
instance, Shelley and Dryden) feel that the prose writer,
if he had been writing in verse, would have been vastly

1 Even Nietzsche does not turn this valuation topsy-turvy.

326 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

more lavish, not merely of positive metre, as he was
bound to be, and of poetic diction, as he was entitled to
be, but of such rhythmical devices as are common to
poetry and the most elaborate prose. Whether, in the
poet, we sometimes feel that the contubernium of the
prose-writer has slightly chilled and stiffened the poetry,
is one of the innumerable controversial questions about
Landor, but, fortunately, one which need merely be
stated, not discussed or answered here. It is with the
prose that we have to do ; and I should not touch on
the verse at all, if it were not the case that in no English
writer known to me are prose and verse so close together,
and that a study of the verse is almost necessary is
certainly very helpful as a preliminary to the study of
the prose. Its results need only be communicated here
to the reader, in so far as they affect estimate of that
prose itself.

His critical His critical or preceptist deliverances on the subject
f *ke re l a ti ns f tne two, and on ornate prose, are,
however, necessary texts. Landor's " classicism " is
tolerably common or neutral ground ; and that it was
classicism with a strong Romantic dash is ground on
which it is scarcely necessary to walk with sword very
loose in the sheath, and cloak ready at an instant to be
rolled round the dagger arm. The unwary reader may
be at first startled when he finds the declaration, 1 " No
writer of florid prose was ever more than a secondary
poet." But he should take in connection with it the
much better known self-description, " Poetry was always
my amusement ; prose my study and business." He is
probably with Chatham rather than with Chesterfield,
when he makes the latter say that " cadence " is " trifling,"
and the former respond, " I am not sure that it is ; for
an orderly and sweet sentence, by gaining our ear,

1 Almost all, but not all, the following extracts will be found in Sir Sidney
Colvin's excellent " Golden Treasury " Selections. I had made rather a
special study of Forster's edition before those Selections appeared, and I have
not failed to re-explore it. But Sir Sidney is as good as Jack Horner at
plum-pulling ; and I think it will seldom be necessary to refer readers
(unless they are wise enough to make the expedition of their own accord) to
the recesses of that most Brobdingnagian or Gargantuan pie.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 327

conciliates our affections." There are, scattered about
the Conversations, many other expressions which, put
as they are in the mouths of the most diverse speakers,
are pretty certainly authoritative in a punning sense,
not to mention that, though Landor thought himself
" dramatic," and perhaps really tried to elude identifica-
tions in the vast masquerade of these Conversations, his
own voice is never mistakable, whatever the cut of the
mask or the colour of the domino from which it proceeds.
Thus Archdeacon Hare, while promulgating the
orthodox classical doctrine that proper words in proper
places leave nothing to be desiderated, admits words
" beyond what is requisite to express the meaning," if
they are " peculiarly beautiful in themselves or strikingly
harmonious," a frank or permit than which hardly any-
thing more can be desired by the most florid or flam-
boyant colourist and tone-monger. Diogenes may talk
like Sprat, 1 and Barrow may advise us only to " say
things plainly " ; but both speak in character and ad hoc,
while Pollio the severe Pollio confesses that he loves
" a nobility and amplitude of style." Home Tooke
demands (it was early !) " variety of cadence," and Andrew
Marvell goes to the full length of saying that prose " may
be infinitely varied in modulation " nay, that it is " only
an extension of metres, an amplification of harmonies of
which even the best and most varied poetry admits but
few." I feel little doubt that this last sentence thoroughly
expresses Lander's opinion. As far as prose is concerned,
he could have quoted (but he did not like quotation) the
passages from the ancients which we have cited at the
opening of this book. As far as poetry went, I think
he speaks pro domo sua to some extent. It is perfectly
true that poetry at large cannot admit some harmonies
which prose welcomes, just as prose refuses all, in the
completed sense, that poetry admits. But that " poetry
admits few harmonies" may be true of Lander's, but is
not true of poetry itself. More especially in English
poetry the bounty of its harmonies is as boundless as
1 V. sup. p. 228.

328 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

the sea, though (as Juliet full well knew in her case) it
may, and should, be bounded by the land of prose.
Results in a These are no mere random " preliminary observations " :

prose grand th e y are intended to lead those readers who may not
already have anticipated it to a definite grasp of Lander's
position in the department of elaborate prose-writing. It
is quite clear that he is aiming at and, in scattered
observations l through various mouthpieces, defining as
much as it was in his nature to define a sort of prose
" Grand Style," which was to unite magnificence with
a certain simplicity, severity with a not more than
appropriate opulence. Elsewhere he approves the
" colour " of Gibbon, being unquestionably right in doing
so. I should think he vacillated, or at least oscillated,
a little between the classical and the romantic poles f of
his curiously constituted taste, as to what the ancients
called frigidity. 2 In fact (snatching once more at what-
ever mantlet I can get hold of to shield me from the
charge of blasphemy), I should say that Landor has a
certain frigidity of a kind, mixed and peculiar to himself,
uniting both the ancient and the modern conceptions of
the fault. But at his best he is absolutely successful,
and so curiously charming that we should go to our
specimens. I cannot help it if the best of the best are
dreams ; and I have said something of that head already.
Besides, are not dreams "the best of the best" in all
things, and the " best of the best," dreams ?

An exceedingly characteristic piece is the following :

1 The reader may look up, if he likes, those in " Aristoteles and Callis-
thenes" (Works, ii. 184) on the dactyl as "the bindweed of prose," etc. ;
or Chatham's, in the dialogue with Chesterfield, above cited, on congrega-
tions of short syllables (iii. 146) (where, however, Landor's most Landorian
and unreasonable prejudice against Plato makes him forget the difference
between Greek and English).

2 It is not very different from the " turgidity " the charge of which (see
"Conversations with Hare") was evidently a sore subject with him.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 329

Now Momus and Zoilus need not find themselves
absolutely baulked here. In one of the prettiest and

1 The reader may observe that I now seldom split words in scanning,
but I certainly think it necessary here. At the same time, the passage has
places, of which this is one, sermoni pedestriori propiora ; and the more prosaic
prose, as has been repeatedly pointed out, is tolerant of sections of six, and
indeed more syllables. "Than the recollection" in one foot -batch is
quite possible.

330 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

most closely observed passages " undulate," " rose/," and
" predominate " are too near. One misses the beautiful
English word " rosial," which lasted up to the middle of
the seventeenth century, though a " brootle and savidge "
editor of Landor's time actually changed it, in Pharonnida,
to " roseate." " Him " and " his " at the end of the same
paragraph are ambiguous. 1 But these are mere beauty-
spots. The piece may, to some tastes, have a little of its
author's occasional approach to mawkishness of sentiment ;
but its execution is very nearly perfect. The extreme
quietness of Landor the music and motion as of the
brooklet stealing through little pebbles (to use the old
image) must strike any fit reader. Some of his man-
nerisms, particularly that of the monosyllabic close, are
noticeable, and the insistence of the Ionic a minore towards
the end of the piece might seem if the notation were
given without the words dangerously " rocking-horsy " ;
but it is entirely saved by those words themselves. If
you compare it with De Quincey, there is somewhat less
intensity and somewhat less volume of sound ; but the
music is something sweeter and something more subtle,
though altogether in a minor key. 2

The famous " Dream of Euthymedes " the Allegory
of Love, Hope, and Fear which follows this, is not only
beautiful, but is a still more remarkable example of quiet
symphony and polyphony. Unfortunately it is very long,
and scarcely divisible ; so I shall substitute for it another
well-known dream, that of Boccaccio, which is perhaps
Landor's most commonly accepted " diploma-piece," and
which has the advantage of forming a much closer
pendant to some things of De Quincey's greatest, while it
at least equally displays the difference of handling and

1 This is not a mere grammaticaster's quibble. Any ambiguity of sense
any necessity to ask yourself "What does this mean?" "to whom does this
apply?" etc. distracts the attention from the music.

2 The long sequence of amphibrachs towards the beginning (around her |

were ready, etc.) is rather unusual elsewhere, but I think characteristic. It
violates no law ; for the amphibrach, as I have tried to show in my work on
Prosody, is not exactly a citizen of English verse, though it has the fullest
civic rights in prose.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 331

fingering between the two masters. We shall, I hope,
find in it ground for more strictly critical consideration
of the merits and defects of the two than the crude
placing as " best " and " second-best " in which some
critics have indulged to De Quincey's disadvantage, and
in which I shall certainly not attempt to <c bring the
balance true " by depreciating Landor. 1

1 He is perhaps the palmary instance of something that has been indicated
in the last paragraph of the Preface to this book. The whole of this chapter
would not be too much for a discussion of all the characteristics of his style ;
but such a discussion would be as wholly out of place. If any one thinks
that, though not an idle and offensive "placing," yet something of a dis-
tinction, should be attempted here between the three masters who have been
noticed, it may be shortly done. The afnaprla of De Quincey, which be-
comes something worse in Wilson, is a tendency to rant and rococo : that
of Landor a tendency to "prunes and prisms." But in the two greater the
' ' frailty " never accomplishes a tragedy, and seldom outgoes the indulgence
accorded by Longinus, and by all his children the good critics, to an absence
of faultlessness.

2 Objection may be taken to my sometimes, perhaps usually, taking ' ' -ience, ''
"-ion," etc., as monosyllabic. The Quarterly was no doubt ignorantly
wrong in scolding Keats for making them dissyllables ; but the other value is
certainly commoner in modern English, especially if it be prose.

332 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Here, once more, is no absolute " faultlessness "
indeed Momus and Zoilus might have even easier game
with this, and I do not know that the very genius and
generosity of Longinus himself could make all the faults
into beauty-spots. Landor has been specially compli-
mented on his freedom from "the fault of breaking up
prose into the fixed and recurrent rhythm of verse." I
am not clear myself, long as has been my practice

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 333

in prosodic manipulation, how you can apply this
compliment to

I trod again the dust of Posilippo,

Soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep.

It is, unluckily, a single sentence ; it cannot fall back on
buttresses, before and after, of the context so as to merge
itself in them ; and even the rhetorical counter-cadence
of the second line, " Soft | as the feathers in the wings
of Sleep," is one frequent in blank verse itself. It is so
beautiful that Exciseman Gill himself could hardly fire a
pistol or make a grab at it ; but I fear it is a little
contraband. " Greater " again, without " coldness " repeated
or some equivalent inserted, is questionable, and a hearer
of the piece might be pardoned a moment's puzzlement
not conducive to enjoyment as to whether the iron
cramps did not grate (in some unusual derivative of that
word) on the hand. While from the point of view of
" The Blessed Meaning," somebody might ask whether
there is any real opposition, or sufficient difference, between
" soft whispers " and " sweetest sounds." For it hath
been held by them of old time that it would be rather
difficult to get a sweeter sound than one kind of " soft
whisper."

But are we Momus ? Are we Zoilus ? Forbid it,
Heaven ! though the first was a kind of sort of God, and
the latter has been at least the tutelary saint of a very
large section of the most admired critics. There may be
things indeed there are as beautiful as that in English
prose ; there is none more beautiful ; while it is at the
same time abundantly characteristic. The short clauses
or sub-sentences already noticeable in the extract first
given, shorn of copulas and conjunctions adversative,
appear at once. Many, if not most, writers would have
written " and I was following," " but she made," " and
though I disobeyed," etc. It would not have made the
sentence unmusical, but it would have made a weaker
and sloppier music. The monosyllabic endings " full "
backed up by two precedent long monosyllables, " dawn,"

334 -A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

" sleep," " mole," " sea " recur likewise. The extension
and rescission of foot and foot-closing word, cunningly
connected with meaning as well as with measure, can
seldom be found exemplified anywhere better than in
" Each had time enough for its tale, for its pleasure, for
its reflection, for its pang anapaest, paeon, dochmiac,
anapaest again ; with the closing words of the feet
long monosyllable, trochee, amphibrach, and recurring
long monosyllable. The Ionic makes its presence felt
throughout, sometimes explicitly, sometimes in an " under-
hum," derived from the marriage of two adjacent feet.
But it is rather more of a seasoning, and rather less of a
solid, than in the other piece. 1

But let us take some pieces of a different character,
reserving the right to return to others nearer to this.
Here is a little bit of description, very cunningly rhythmdd.
And if any one objects to the inversion and ellipsis of
" pleasant " as too poetic, let him remember that in the
very first English prose-writers who tried to make prose
ornate, such as Bishop Fisher, the means is resorted to.

v ^ ^ ~ ^- - s_ >-, s_- ^ ~

The insidious and irrepressible heroic omnibus rhyth-
mis insurgens crops up here again in

And crisp-leaved beech and broad dark pine above.
But here you can throw " and crisp-leaved beech " back

1 Observe, too, the effect, after the unusual run of long-foot paeons and
dochmiacs "and their statues," etc., of the iamb, with its strong mono-
syllabic latter half " and bay," as a tonic contrast.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 335

to the preceding rhythm group (" surrounded by broom
and myrtle, and crisp-leaved beech "), while " and broad
dark pine above," thanks to the almost molossian com-
bination or group of three separate long monosyllables,
also escapes the suggestion. " Tall sz'sterhoods of gr^y
lavender " is a cunning and consummate instance of
vowel-sound contrast ; while " cistus " and " citisus," with
their respective epithets, give undoubtedly a bold but
successful try at nearly, but not quite, exact consonance. 1
There are several favourite passages in the " ^Esop
and Rhodope " ; but the most frequently quoted that
describing the sale of the child by her famished father
derives part of its charm from a set and intentional
puerility which would render elaborate rhythm unsuitable.
Another, and one of the most perfect of all, I postpone.
And I think that elsewhere Landor has a little undergone
the charge of being too definitely poetical, if not in form,
at any rate in phrase.

is beautiful but (I am content myself to undergo the
charge of hypercriticism) it seems to me too definitely
stichic it is not rhythmical prose so much as loosely
metred verse. It is classable with Blake and Whitman,
not with Taylor and Browne. And it is obvious that that
ambidexterity with the two harmonies which has been
credited to Landor would be likely to lead to this some-
times. On the other hand, a piece of extraordinary
beauty (not, I think, given by Sir Sidney Colvin), but
standing, like some of De Quincey's noted above, in most
interesting proximity to the standard style itself, is this
from " Brooke and Sidney."

1 It should be noticed here, as well as in the last extract, that Landor
makes great play with the xenon the unfamiliar but well-sounding word
" alaternus," "drosera," "serpolet"

336 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Here, on the contrary, is another l which is of the first

1 From "Mahomet and Sergius."

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 337

interest because it is eighteenth century in substance,
but eighteenth century saturated with the new tone. If
any one will compare it with one of the De Quincey pieces
or with its author's own " Dream of Boccaccio " above, he
will see at once what I mean.

There is much in that which Addison, which Johnson,
which even Burke, could not, or certainly would not, have
given ; and yet somehow " the bones of it," as the familiar
phrase goes, are not foreign to those of the " Vision of
Mirza " and the more ambitious parts of Rasselas, still less
to the flights of Burke. As I scan it I feel that sense of
superfluity though not of incongruity of which I have
spoken before. The hinges of its rhythm are things like

1 I have pointed out elsewhere (Hist. Pros. iii. 410) that this word is bad
in English verse of any kind. In prose it must, I think, take the above
scansion, but I think it should be avoided there also.

338 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

the position of " on the ranks " and " in the tent," where
the clauses swing backwards and forwards on them ;
rhetorical emphasis, like " unselected, unsolicited, and
unwon," where, though there is the foot contrast, it hurries,
neglecting itself, to the mere stress of " unwon" There
is altogether too much elocution about the piece ; it
suggests the declaimer, stooping and rising and throwing
his hands about and advancing to the edge or retiring to
the back of the rostrum, raising and lowering his voice,
and running over long strings of almost slurred syllables,
till he pounces on and explodes the chosen one. It has
the rhythm that such rhetoric requires, but then we must
take rhetoric not in its highest sense.

Compare the following. It, too, is descriptive ; it is
passionate ; and it ends like the last, with a direct rhetorical
address, this time to a person. But it neither trespasses
on the region of half-metred verse, nor has it the limita-
tions of the oratorical balance and adaptation to " delivery."
If not of the most exquisite, it is that almost more
valuable if less delightful thing for us a specimen
eminently characteristic of the author.

339

That is very quiet and not in the least in the bravura
kind. But not the rhythmical value of a single syllable
is lost ; and the music is heard all through, not in bursts
and silences, or in alternations of melody and recitative.
There are numerous trochaic endings that the trochee
among its manifold and curious qualities has a peculiar
note of wailing should be noticed and it will be good to
contrast with the antithesis just noted of " on the sands "
and " in the tent " that, so unantithetical, of " upon the
wainscot " and " upon the arras."

Of citations from Landor there could be no end if
Pleasure were dictatress, but Duty, that insufficiently
engaging but peremptory daughter of the great Voice,
fixes a limit. Let us conclude with two short passages
of extraordinary beauty one distinguished by absolute
liberation from the style of marked balance ; the other
showing a certain inclination towards that style, but more
away from it :

Here the image, beautiful as it is, may have a little of
that conventional appropriation of special features and
gestures to special emotions in which eighteenth-century
aestheticians revelled till they sometimes became ridiculous.
But the rhythm is simply perfect. I should put it beside
the passage of the eyes of the Mater Suspiriorum as
unsurpassed since the renaissance of numerous prose.
The Ionic, as usual, is not a little responsible for its

340 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

motive, but it is greatly varied ; and in the exquisite last
clause (" and with a low and tremulous and melancholy
song ") it is not present at all.

The other (the reserved one from JEsop and Rhodope)
is rather longer and more complex, and there is absolutely
no possibility of Mephistopheles intruding his cock's-
feather ; but it is a leetle more rhetorical :

Beyond these great -in -little descants on the two
master -themes of literature, Love and Death, it is
probably unnecessary to go ; and here, as with the other,
it does not seem indispensable to make much detailed
comment. 2 The scansion should speak for itself to all
who are able to hear it ; and those who cannot are

1 It is not disagreeable to remember that he who wrote this was himself to
"sit up late" far beyond the usual bed-time, to congratulate himself on having
had time to "warm both hands before the fire of life." Even putting his
" dramatic " element aside, there is no real inconsistency in the two
expressions : they are the motives of the two sides of that shield of mood,
which, if we could not turn it, would be but half a protection to us.

2 When we draw, or at least attempt, general conclusions, it will be
permissible to return to these perhaps. But meanwhile I may suggest
attention to a small point. Elsewhere Landor, with his usual precision (oh,
call it not pedantry !), prefers the form " Helena " as more classical. But
here the three final a's of the names would be importunate, and he admits the
English shortening.

341

certainly not likely to have reached, save in a casual and
disgusted dip, the 34ist page of this book.

On the work of these three masters who, let it be Some general
remembered, were all writing, though all the pieces cited observatlons -
from them were not written, if not actually by 1820, by a
period very little later, and perhaps in some cases earlier
as well as on that of Coleridge, which is actually older
than the century, a few general observations may be
permissible, especially as we purpose nothing more of the
nature of an " Interchapter " before the " Conclusion "
itself. That there is something, in every example which
has been given, markedly different from any prose that
we have seen, since the third quarter of the seventeenth
century at latest, few will, I think, deny ; though whether
the change is an improvement or not is, of course, an
entirely open question. Of the nature of that change
itself it would be possible to say many things ; but a
good many of these also would be doubtfully relevant or
certainly not so. Whether to reverse and embroider the
application of Johnson's metaphor on Dryden they found
English prose stucco and left it like the stones of St.
Mark, or whether they found it like the Parthenon at
Athens and left it like the Pavilion at Brighton, we are
not here to decide. But in the rhythmical view
though, once more, the " for-better-for-worse " remains a
matter of taste the fact of the change is unquestionable,
and the nature of it is our proper business for observations
and considerations.

The most important of these is something which has The four kinds
been frequently glanced at, but which it is perhaps by this relation 1 to '"
time possible and desirable to set forth in a more explicit prose,
and orderly fashion. The principle from which this book
starts, and which, as Dante says, 1 " we do not argue about
but take for granted," is that formulated in the quotation
from Quintilian on the title-page the omnipresence, in
speech and writing alike, of at least the materials of rhythm,
contrasted in a fashion which something like the communis

1 Unamquamque doctrinam oportet non probare, sed suum aperire subjectum
(De viilg. eloq. \. i. ).

342 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

sensus of Europe has agreed, until recently at any rate, to
call " long " and " short." These contrasted values may
be treated with such slovenliness that anything like a
distinct and harmonious rhythm disappears ; but the
materials of it remain in almost any possible articulation,
and in almost any possible juxtaposition of written words.
It assumes some structure and arrangement even in the
ordinary conversation of educated and well-bred persons ;
and literature can hardly exist without it But, in
literature, the character and complexity of its structure
assumes forms the difference of which, for our present
purpose especially, may be conveniently reduced to four
their order (for the same reasons of convenience) being
in a sense reversed, so that we may proceed from the most
elaborate downward and not vice versa. These forms or
groups of forms are :

I. Poetry or metre.

II. Unmetrical or only partially metrical poetry, which,
however, retains the arrangement of " verse," or division
into sections not identical but corresponding with one
another, definitely separated by a considerable pause,
which is not determined merely by the sense.

III. Fully but strictly rhythmical prose.

IV. Prose in which rhythm, though present, is sub-
ordinated to other considerations. 1

i. Non-prosaic With the first metre or poetry proper we have
poetry 1 nothing to do here except in so far as it is probably the
oldest form of literature, and therefore of literate rhythm,
and in so far likewise as it forms a useful contrast, and
even as it were a sort of garde-fou in our enquiries. In it
the rhythm is always arranged correspondingly, though
sometimes in a very intricate correspondence, with the
answering parts at considerable distances one from
another ; and though large substitution of equivalent
rhythmical units is in some cases permitted. In other
words, the principle of sameness is that which is at the

1 It does not seem necessary to make a special division for the prose
which employs arbitrary mechanical divisions, not rhythmical or quasi-metrical
in character, but for rhetorical effect, like that of Sterne, Lamb, or Carlyle, in
their different ways.

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 343

bottom of it, though this sameness may be, and in all the
very best poetry always is, allied with as much variety as
is consistent with its preservation. And one main, if not all
but autocratic and automatic, means of securing this is the
division into " lines " or " verses," which, in their recurrence,
bring out this identity in diversity.

The second division is small in its contents, com- n. Hybrid
paratively recent in its appearance as regards most ve
eminent and modern European literatures, and perhaps
not, in the general opinion, absolutely sure of a valid
position, but still logically entitled to demand a place
with the other three. It arises when the writer, desirous
of retaining a mechanical division of his word-groups
somewhat similar to that of verse, and usually intending
to retain also much rhythm and even something like metre,
rejects the principle of actual recurrence and correspond-
ence in length, quantitative equivalence and the like,
while generally also retaining a good deal of specially
poetic diction. This in a more or less original form that
of " parallelism " appears to be of secular existence in
Oriental poetry. With a strong cant or tilt towards
metre itself, it, or something very like it, exists in the older
Teutonic poetry. And by an apparently direct result of the
union of Hebrew and Teutonic influences in the sixteenth-
century translations of the Bible pushed further by the
individual predilections and achievements of three English-
speaking persons of talent, which on two occasions
amounted to genius it has had some very remarkable
examples in the last two centuries. These are Macpherson's
Ossian, which influenced all Europe, and produced a kind
of prose-verse even in French language of all European
languages most apparently ill-suited to it ; Blake's " Pro-
phetic " books, which have been imitated, though never
successfully ; and the peculiar manner, of which almost as
much may be said, of Walt Whitman. If, in some character-
istics, this medium is certainly not verse, in others it is
as certainly not prose ; but it will scarcely be deemed
criminal if we devote at least a short Appendix to it.

It is necessary, however (and this necessity has by no

344 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

in. Pure means always been recognised), to distinguish it most
rhthmed bly c3 - r ^ u ^Y fr m tne P ure but highly rhythmical prose which
has been the subject of this chapter ; which will, to some
extent, figure in the next, and which may absorb the whole
of yet another before we have finished. This prose does
not require, and at its best ought not to suffer, distribution
into snippets. It bears, as prose should, no other
mechanical groupings than those of clause, sentence, and
paragraph ; and its sentences should possess reasonable
continuity of rhythm throughout the whole of the para-
graph, the close of which, and that only, is the place of
breaking-off. This prose, however, is fully, and in every
syllable, susceptible of quantification and consequent foot-
scansion ; the full necessary character of all speech and
writing (vide motto) being thus loyally recognised and
brought out. But this scansion is arranged on a principle
totally different, and indeed opposed, when compared
with that of poetry. Instead of sameness, equivalence,
and recurrence, the central idea turns on difference,
inequality, and variety. And though a certain amount of
correspondence is introduced by the necessary presence of
the identical quantity-combinations called feet, these are
to be so arranged that they will not constitute metre.
Fragments of different metres melted or welded rather
than dovetailed or mosaicked into the whole can hardly
be avoided, and indeed will positively improve it ; but if
they emerge and " stick out " it is doomed. Its great law
is that every syllable shall, as in poetry, have recognis-
able rhythmical value, and be capable of entering into
rhythmical transactions with its neighbours, but that
these transactions shall always stop short, or steer clear,
of admitting the recurrent combinations proper to metre,
iv. Prose in The enormous bulk of prose, though in gradations
differing extremely from one another, may be arranged
downward from this, according to the amount of attention
which the writer has paid to rhythm as such ; the
principles of it which he has adopted ; and the success
with which he has carried these principles out. We have
seen that even some of the masterpieces of De Quincey

ix REVIVAL OF RHYTHMICAL ELABORATION 345

and Landor show a certain tendency to sink from the
polyphonic and symphonic music of the highest kind
to the antithetic groups, oratorical or other, of the standard
style. It is, at first sight, curious, though not perhaps
really surprising, 1 that hardly anything of the same sort
is to be found in the great symphonists of the seventeenth
century. We have done, however, no despite to this style,
which, in its highest examples, is satisfying if not exactly
delectable, or, at least, transporting ; and which is un-
doubtedly the best for the general purposes of prose.
But it has been pointed out that, in all but its very best
examples, though a not unpleasant rhythmical effect may
be got out of the clause-pairs or batches taken together,
the rhythmical appeal dwindles through clause, and word-
group, and word, and syllable, and letter, till it sometimes
very nearly vanishes. Although in good English delivery,
as in good English writing, the principle of general
atonic equality, diversified with crashes and bursts of
emphasis, never prevails as it does in French, some
progress is made in this direction. The foot-division,
inseparable from rhythm and scarcely capable of extension
beyond the fifth syllable, becomes merged in long section-
sweeps, which are hardly analysable. And this, increasing
as you go lower, constitutes the main difference between
the whole of this Fourth class and the fully rhythmed
Third. 2

Thus rhythmical prose, in its perfection, is distinguished
from poetry by subtle but easily recognisable differences
of diction, arrangement, and the like, but most of all, and
most essentially, by the absence of definite and ostentatious
correspondence in rhythmical-metrical character, and of
equivalent or definitely corresponding " lines." It is

1 The fact is simply that this style was not yet discovered generally, though
there is something much like it, especially in Jonson. Extravagant and often
caricatured balance, as in Lyly, and even before him in Ascham, was common ;
but Dryden had not yet come.

2 It would require, of course, a very elaborate system of sub-classification
to take in all the varieties. Some very distinguished and delightful writers,
such as Goldsmith, would, in fact, have to be "species by themselves," like
Walton above (p. 216) and Lamb below (p. 362). But I do not think that,
in a book on the present scale, I am bound to provide excursus of this kind.

346 A HISTORY Ob ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CH. ix

separated from the various hybrids of the Ossianic,
Blakite, or Whitmanian kind in the same way, though
not to the same degree, in more respects than one
especially in the absence of even irregular stichic division.
It obeys to the full that universal law of prose which
dictates continuous and uninterrupted flow, not merely to
the close of the sentence, but (with a difference of course)
to the close of the paragraph. Yet it retains, in a greater
degree perhaps than some at least of these hybrids, the
rhythmical valuation of every word and syllable ; and by
this retention, as well as by the intense variety of its
rhythm, it is further distinguished from the lower kinds of
prose proper.

The work of all the writers with whom this chapter
has been more specially busy lasted till well into the
second half of the nineteenth century, Wilson surviving
the dividing line for nearly a lustrum, De Quincey for
nearly a decade, and Landor until the century had all but
entered upon its last third. But their position as pioneers
is quite unaffected by this ; and it will not prevent us, any
more than the fact that Mr. Ruskin's work had begun
long before even Wilson died, from making an arrange-
ment of the remaining subjects, convenient in practice and
not really repugnant to chronology.

CHAPTER X

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, l82O-l86o

The coexistence of different styles in 1820 Momentary return to
Landor Comparative merits The " standard " still prevalent,
but with a tendency to degradation Definition of " slovenli-
ness" Return to examples Coleridge again Jeffrey Note
on italics Chalmers Note on Irving Hazlitt Lamb Leigh
Hunt Carlyle Macaulay The novelists : Miss Austen and
Peacock Lord Beaconsfield Dickens Thackeray Newman.

THE space devoted, in the last chapter, to the farthest The coexist-
developments of rhythmical prose up to date should, Afferent styles
of course, misguide no one as to the existence of many in 1820.
other kinds during the lifetime of the authors there chiefly
discussed ; or even as to the practice, actually there
noticed, of these same writers in different styles. By far
the larger part of Landor's voluminous prose is, like the
larger part by far of De Quincey's, written in a variety of
the " standard " style ; and it may even be said that, for
the moment, few took up the new method.

It may possibly amuse some readers to repeat an ex- Momentary
perience which I made, just before writing these words, in
re-reading the Conversations straight through. At the
distance of a bare half-dozen pages (Works, ii. 171-177)
the two following short passages specially caught my eye.
Here is the first :

On perceiving the countryman, she [a tigress suckling her young~\
drew up her feet gently, and squared her mouth, and rounded her
eyes, slumberous with content ; and they looked, he said, like sea-
grottoes, obscurely green, interminably deep, at once awaking fear
and stilling and compressing it.

347

348 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The other is this :

Where priests have much influence the gods have little ; and
where they are numerous and wealthy, the population is scanty and
miserably poor. War may be, and certainly is, destructive ; but
war, as thou well knowest, if it cuts off boughs and branches, yet
withers not the trunk.

Comparative Here Momus may suggest that " and compressing " is
otiose in meaning and not exactly an improvement in
rhythm ; and Zoilus may say that " as thou well knowest "
is superfluous and out of keeping. The Judicious Critic will
prefer to draw attention to the polar difference between
the colour, the tone, and the consequent rhythmical effect
of the two, both of them, by the way, occurring in Greek
conversations, in both of which Xenophon actually figures.
The first has, in its small compass, every characteristic of
the new mode exact and subtle observation of " {he
streaks of the tulip," careful expression of it in specially
selected and coloured words, and arrangement of those
words in harmonies, every note of which requires valuation
in order to get the full effect. The other, though there
is a " figure " in it, appeals to the intellect only ; and
therefore contents itself with the old balanced and counter-
parted arrangement, where the clauses zigzag in parallels
like the bars of a double rule. I do no despite to this
" standard style " ; as I have again and again observed, I
think it ought to be kept in nine out of ten, if not for
ninety-nine out of a hundred, instances ; and I differ as
strongly as possible with the notion of some, if not most,
of our younger critics, that every prose writer should aim
at flourish and arabesque, at the mot rayonnant and the
epithet fetched from Tarshish, golden or ivoirine, peacockish
or perhaps apish, as the case may be. I do not want the
concert of the plain of Dura as a constant accompaniment
to my daily food of prose. But I certainly would not
spare to interpose these things whenever there is time and
temper to enjoy them ; and I consider them, though
not (as some do vainly talk) a greater delight to the senses
of the mind than poetry itself, one hardly less.

The vast majority of writers for nearly a couple of

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 349

generations showed themselves to be of no very different The
opinion in practice as to one-half of this, though probably

few of them would have assented to the other in theory.
An eccentric or two, such as Lamb earlier and Carlyle
later, excepted, not merely Southey but the vast majority
of English prose-men from 1800 to 1840 at least aimed
at the standard style. Most people did the same from
1840 to 1860, though a new prophet of rhythm in excelsis
like Ruskin might gain a few followers. And the com-
parison of the Life of Schiller with Carlyle's own later
work shows it is indeed a commonplace of style-criticism
that Carlyle himself might conceivably never have written
in any other. For a time the elaborate rhythm is as a
voice sounded in the desert.

But this standard style itself though, in the hands not
merely of Southey but of younger men like Lockhart, it
produced work of all but the highest excellence, of the
very highest perhaps in its own class though in those of
others, especially of Newman, it took to itself something
of the fuller rhythms, and became a thing of incomparable
idiosyncrasy and beauty was yet necessarily subject to
that mysterious law of disease and degradation which is
observable everywhere in the young gazelle, in the " piece
of bread, Particularly large and wide," and therefore also
in prose. Once more the phenomenon which the Byzantine
patriarch had formulated in the ninth century repeated
itself in the nineteenth, and the clear, plain, simple style
" fell to flatness and meanness."

How early this degradation took place, and exactly but with a
what its character was, are points on which difference of tendency to

11 -4. ui i T a j u j-rr / r de g radatlon -

opinion will inevitably arise. 1 find such difference (of

the friendliest kind as before, and without any Athanasian
certainty on my own part that he is wrong and I am
right) between myself and Sir Henry Craik. In fact, this
disagreement is only a sort of corollary of the other,
formerly noted, as to Johnson. Sir Henry thinks that
eighteenth -century prose (not merely Johnson's, but in
general) was " stately," but that " before that century had
passed the tradition of stateliness had waned," and that

350 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

prose passed, with the nineteenth, into a tripartite degenera-
tion of sham formality (such as that of Jeffrey and even
Macaulay), fantastic ornament (such as that of De Quincey
and Landor), and archaic or antique phraseology (such as
that of Lamb or Carlyle). But he does not lay much
stress on a fourth " corruption," as Aristotle would say,
that of slovenliness. Now I should myself (as indeed the
reader will partly anticipate from what has been said
already) not merely exempt De Quincey, Landor, Lamb,
and Carlyle from all taint of corruption of any kind, but
put the " standard style " of the first generation, at least,
of the nineteenth century, as a style general, and for
purposes of all work and every day, far above that of any
writer of the eighteenth, with perhaps the exception of
Berkeley. I should put down the " stilts," the pedantic
mannerisms, as, if not a damnosa hereditas from Johnson
himself, at any rate a misuse of his goods, of which some
prodigal sons like Hawkesworth earlier, and Mackintosh
later, were guilty long before the eighteenth ended. And
I should put the great sin of the early nineteenth as
" slovenliness," from which, though I do not specially
admire average eighteenth-century prose, I admit that it
was mostly free.

Definition of It is, however, very necessary to define this word with
"sioyenh- SO me care : for, like other words of its class, if not of most

ness. '

classes, it is commonly used with the greatest looseness.
Half-educated critics have a constant tendency to confuse
idiom with solecism, and " bad grammar " with breaches
of the rules of grammar-books which have no authority at
all. They shy at words with which they are themselves
unfamiliar, without considering whether these words are
correctly formed, whether they supply a single designation
for something that would otherwise require a cumbrous
periphrasis, whether they add colour and tone to the com-
position, whether they increase that stock of not exact
but pretty close synonyms which is the greatest treasure
and glory of the English language. But these things,
and many others that are commonly objected to as
" slovenly," are, necessarily at least, nothing of the kind.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 351

Slovenliness is something quite different. It may be said
generally to require ignorance, carelessness, and bad taste,
in about equal proportions, but exercised usually in the
sequence just given. The sloven does not know the good,
does not care whether what he chooses is good or bad,
and is inclined by his nature to the latter. But the
neologist must know not a little and take some pains ;
the parenthetic writer must be thoughtful, and anxious to
express his full thought. Even slang need not be slovenly
if it is employed, not out of slothful complaisance, but to
give force, colour, and idiosyncrasy. True slovenliness has
myriad forms ; but it may generally be traced to a habit
of writing, not in the writer's own way, but with tags and
catchwords and commonplaces picked out of the common
gutter, and huddled together regardless of the principles
of real (not book) grammar, of the proper sequence of
thought, of the usage of the best writers, and of the general
tendency and constitution of English. And in this respect,
I think, the average nineteenth-century writer, at least
for two-thirds of the century, was more peccant than his
father, grandfather, or great-grandfather of the eighteenth.
But it may be said, " What has all this to do with
rhythm ? " Why, a good deal. I shall scarcely be
charged with having made a Baal or a Juggernaut of
meaning, or of being a martinet as to vocabulary and
grammar. But unless due (not undue) attention is paid
to all these things, the mind has not the serenity which
is necessary to the enjoyment of the harmony of prose.
The "added charm of metre" may sometimes disguise
nonsense ; but, for my part, since " numerous prose " be-
came common, I find nonsense in it (which is necessarily
more common likewise) more disgusting than ever ; and
a really bad piece of really bad English will poison any
fountain from Bandusia to Eunoe itself. " Reliable " is, as
far as sound goes, a perfectly good second paeon, fit, pro
tanto, to appear anywhere ; but its illegitimate formation l

1 Of course I know its defenders and their defences. But, except in mere

"It is loathsome and worthless in eveiy sense,
And loathsome it will be a hundred years hence."

352 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and its vulgar society would make it as a flesh-fly
in opobalsamum, even though the sentence in which it
appeared were as beautiful as those two singled out above
from the Suspiria and the Conversations. " And which "
in its numerous correct uses 1 may appear as a spondee,
an iamb, or perhaps sometimes a pyrrhic, or as constitut-
ing longer feet which require such syllables, and be
welcome anywhere in any sentence, plain or splendid.
But misused, it spoils the beauty of what might otherwise
be a triumph of Mercury and Apollo working together.
" Dilapidated " is in itself a positively fine dochmiac, fit for
the greatest occasions : yet we saw what an unlucky taint
of association made it do in a fine passage one in close
neighbourhood to the finest. " Individual " is good, and
indeed necessary, in more than one sense ; as misused for
" person " it is a silly abomination.

Now in this respect I should, as I have already said,
heartily agree with Sir Henry Craik that nineteenth-
century (or at least early nineteenth-century) prose is
inferior to eighteenth, and that part at least of the reason
is that there is so much more of it, that it has been so
much more hastily written, and that the education of the
persons writing it has been progressively deteriorating.
But something must perhaps be added as to the character
of the best examples of these plain styles. They all
look easy enough ; but either they are terribly hard, or
they require some special gift that very few people possess.
What style has fewer ostensible tricks, involves less
recourse to recondite materials, than Dryden's ? Who has
equalled it ? For an entire century some most perhaps
of the cleverest writers of English tried to write like
Addison. How did they succeed ? But this later
" standard style " is the most puzzling of all. Southey's
was and is the object of an admiration which has. never,
in competent persons, been affected by private grudges,
political differences, dislike of what is called his Pharisaism,
want of interest in his subjects, any one of the innumer-
able extra-literary agencies which affect judgment. Have

1 Much more numerous than the grammar-books seem to think, by the way.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 353

you ever tried to analyse it ? I have, again and again,
and have failed completely to get any closer than gener-
alities, mostly negative. You can see easily enough what
he does not do ; you can appreciate the result of what he
does ; but the rest " goes out into mystery."

It is, however, necessary, and should be not unprofit- Return to
able, to take examples of the principal prose-writers of a exam P les -
general kind who established themselves as craftsmasters,
before the influence of De Quincey and Landor, re-
inforced by the mighty flood of Mr. Ruskin's prose
picture-symphonies, drew, and swept along with it or
before it, almost all those writers who aimed at elaborate
prose. They will be selected partly because of their
undoubted greatness, partly because some have thought
them great, chiefly because they illustrate the standard
style in various ways. They will show it, now maintain-
ing its position, now degenerating into rhetoric without
rhetorical beauty, now attaining that beauty either by
sheer expertness in the use of its own means or (a new
thing to which especial attention may be invited) by play-
ing the Israelite to the purely rhythmical style's Egyptian,
and borrowing jewels of silver and jewels of gold, here
and there, to adorn a body which is in general character
and constitution only moderately rhythmical. Some of
them will be only partially scanned, or not scanned at all,
so as to bring out, as it were by illustration or diagram,
these differences of character to the eye as well as to
the ear.

We may start, by a partial retrogression, with a Coleridge
passage from Coleridge where, it will be seen, he has got agam-
rid of the " Surinam toad " character, and has remembered
something of his earlier cunning l and inspiration as
shown in the Anima Poetae fragments. But, as will also
be seen at once, it lies, in scheme of rhythmical com-
position, between the purely polyphonic and the style of
oratorical balance. The scanned and unscanned parts, on

1 That he did not remember more was perhaps due to that "blighting
commonsense " which has been surprisingly discovered, in him and other
nineteenth-century writers, as opposed to the " imaginative understanding"
of the twentieth.

2 A

354 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

the principle just mentioned, should show this better than
comment in detail. There are fragments of definite har-
monic quality in the passages left unscanned, and I have
italicised them for the reader to scan, if he likes. But the
general principle of their context is not much beyond
the standard balance and the occasional emphasis of
the end. 1

the stars | rise, | and touching them | they vanish. By the many,
even this range, the natural limit and bulwark of the vale, is but
imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are too often hidden by
mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which few have
courage or curiosity to penetrate. To the multitude below these
vapours appear, now as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which
none may intrude with impunity j and now all aglow with colours
not their own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness

Note on 1 In printing this extract from Coleridge, I have ventured on a slight

italics. infidelity to the text which I trust this note will excuse. He seems to have
italicised (at any rate the printed text does so) the words "its," "them,"
" them " in the second sentence. It was a common habit with him, and it was,
perhaps, caught from him by De Quincey, whose employment of the italic in
his most ambitious passages is copious. Now, with some diffidence, I am still
bold enough to think this wrong. I do not, as some lofty persons do, despise
the italic altogether as a " refuge of the forcible feeble," or as feminine and
indeed governessy. I think that it is quite admissible, and very useful, in
what De Quincey himself called " the literature of knowledge " in exposition,
in argument, and the like. It undoubtedly assists not so very feeble folk who
read, and I am by no means sure that it indicates feebleness in those who
write. At any rate, I think it is legitimate for me and for my house a
convenient porter's knot for those who do porter's work, a pointing-stick for
those who serve the blackboard. But in the higher realms of the "literature
of power " italics seem to me out of place and annoying, and, in deliberately
and elaborate rhythmical prose, not merely a superfluity, but a confession of
failure or, least, of self -diffidence. The rhythm, if it is real, will supply the
required emphasis unfailingly, while the italic signpost (and something more)
tfz><?r-emphasises (non de me fabula), and invites that sovereign mistake of
paying too much attention to a single syllable which we have so often noticed.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 355

supply. | How and whence to these thoughts, these strong prob-
abilities, the ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may finally
supervene, can be learnt only by the fact.

On the other hand, the next piece to be given, from Jeffrey.
Jeffrey, is wholly " standard," but a standard of the less
harmonious kind, snip-snappy, and what has been repre-
hensibly denominated "clatteraceous," not a little resembling
the manner of Jeffrey's most celebrated contributor.
Rhythmical, no less than logical, criticism puts a very
low value on the obvious trick of " less this than that ;
less that than t'other " ; and, to borrow its own way of
writing, though the passage cannot be pronounced to be
without affectation, it may certainly be said to be without
any eminent grace.

Of his style, it has been usual to speak with great, and, we think,
exaggerated praise. It is less mellow than Dryden's, less elegant
than Pope's or Addison's, less noble than Lord Bolingbroke's, and
utterly without the glow and loftiness which belonged to our earlier
masters. It is radically a low and homely style, without grace and
without affectation, and chiefly remarkable for a great choice and
profusion of common words and expressions. Other writers who
have used a plain and direct style have been for the most part
jejune and limited in their diction, and generally give us an
impression of the poverty as well as the lameness of their language ;
but Swift, without ever trespassing into figured or poetical expressions,
or ever employing a word that can be called fine or pedantic, has
a prodigious variety of good set phrases always at his command,
and displays a sort of homely richness, like the plenty of an old English
dinner, or the wardrobe of a wealthy burgess. This taste for the
plain and substantial was fatal to his poetry, which subsists not on
such elements ; but was in the highest degree favourable to the
effect of his humour, very much of which depends on the imposing
gravity with which it is delivered, and on the various turns and
heightenings it may receive from a rapidly shifting and always
appropriate expression.

If the words used above seem too harsh, let a few
others of explanation, which, without retracting or
hedging, may soften the apparent injustice, be added

356 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

before we pass to an example decidedly less favourable
still, which will itself, to some extent, rehabilitate by
comparison this Little Master of " the narrow English."
We have nothing to do with the substance of the criticism,
though those who insist on the indissolubleness of form
and meaning might make not a bad innings out of that.
The point to which I wish to draw attention is the
fatiguing and monotonous zigzag of advance and retreat
the omnipresence and almost omnipotence of the " but,"
which enables the writer, as if with the see -saw of a
folding-machine, to supply himself with constant parallel
pairs of measured-off deliverances. The sentences do
not indeed jar ; the meaning is clearly enough conveyed :
nobody can call it bad English. If you take an English
composition-book or an American " Manual of Rhetoric,"
I daresay you will not be able to find a fault in it with
the help of the most exacting of either class. But it has
no juice, no sap, no unction, and therefore (with a rapid
but not illegitimate shift of category), it has no rhythm
beyond mere pendulum work.

Yet, as was said above, Jeffrey by no means gave the
worst examples of this style. Read the following :

The elements of Euclid, gentlemen, have raised for their author
a deathless monument of fame. For two thousand years they have
maintained their superiority in the schools, and been received as
the most appropriate introduction to geometry. It is one of the
few books which elevate our respect for the genius of antiquity. It
has survived the wreck of ages. It had its days of adversity and
disgrace in the dark period of ignorance and superstition, when
everything valuable in the literature of antiquity was buried in the
dust and solitude of cloisters, and the still voice of truth was
drowned in the jargon of a loud and disputatious theology. But
it has been destined to reappear in all its ancient splendour. We
ascribe not, indeed, so high a character to it because of its antiquity ;
but why be carried away by the rashness of innovation ? why pour
an indiscriminate contempt on systems and opinions because they
are old ? Truth is confined to no age and to no country. Its
voice has been heard in the Temple of Egypt, as well as in the
European University. It has darted its light athwart the gloom of
antiquity, as well as given a new splendour to the illumination of
modern times. We have witnessed the feuds of political innovation
the cruelty and murder which have marked the progress of its

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 357

destructive career. Let us also tremble at the heedless spirit of
reform which the confidence of a misguided enthusiasm may attempt
in the principles and investigations of philosophy. What would
have been the present degradation of science had the spirit of each
generation been that of contempt for the labours and investigations
of its ancestry ? Science would exist in a state of perpetual infancy.
Its abortive tendencies to improvement would expire with the short-
lived labours of individuals, and the extinction of every new race
would again involve the world in the gloom of ignorance. Let us
tremble to think that it would require the production of a new
miracle to restore the forgotten discoveries of Newton.

Now that is the work of Thomas Chalmers, who, Chalmers,
though now a good deal forgotten everywhere, even in
Scotland, and never much read by Englishmen in the
narrow sense, has often had high praise, and was, for
instance, regarded by my late friend and predecessor,
Professor Masson, as worthy of mention, even with the
greatest of all his Christian namesakes with Browne
himself, as a master of ornate style. To me, I confess,
it seems a mere beating of the pan, or kettle, or caldron,
or pot, with a beater of material as dull as the object
beaten is dissonant. The general sense -effect goes
perilously near to that burlesque danger of the style
which Sydney Smith brought out so admirably in respect
to Mackintosh ; l and I say this with no failure to honour
Euclid, whom, in dead opposition, I believe, to modern
views, I regard as supplying, with his native Greek, the
two best subjects for a boy's education. Nor am I
thinking of its " piffle " about " dark periods of ignorance
and superstition," any more than I am bribed by its
" trembling at the heedless spirit of reform." My point
is the idle and mechanical tick-tack of its antithesis, the
wooden clatter of its stump-ended and staccato clause-
balance. Johnson without his sinews and marrow ;
Gibbon without his undulating harmony ; Burke with his
store of phrase and image and argument withered like
the herbs that they sell in paper bags these are what
it makes me think of. And its general manner is what
Sir Henry Craik (though I do not know that he would
agree with me in my selection of example) has, to my

1 V. sup. p. 271.

358 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

thinking, justly called " the worthless husks of a formal
literary tradition." 1

Haziitt. Hazlitt is, I believe, often thought of he has, at any
rate, sometimes been described as a rather careless

Note on l There is no doubt that Chalmers's "assistant," Edward Irving, caught
Irving, a great deal of this pompous style from his chief. He informed, or inflated,
it, of course, with something more ; and his effect as an orator has the
weightiest vouchers. In fact, I could add that of my own father, who as a
young man had heard Irving preach, to the printed testimonies of the greatest
men of letters of 1820-1830. But when one reads him, the case is altered.
I need hardly comment much on the following mingle-mangle of bad blank
verse, bad sham Burke, bungled Biblical phrase, tags of hackneyed quotation,
clumsily peppered 'eths, and everywhere cheap and vulgar rhetoric, profaning
the Immensities :

" Imagination cowers her wing, unable || to fetch the compass of the ideal
scene. || The great white throne descending out of Heaven, || guarded and
begirt with the principalities and powers thereof, || the awful presence at
whose sight the Heavens || and the earth flee away, and no place for them is
found, the shaking of the mother elements of nature || and the commotiom of
the hoary deep || to render up their long-dissolved dead, 1| the rushing to-
gether || of quickened men upon all the winds of Heaven || down to the
centre || where the Judge sitteth on his blazing throne. || To give form and
figure and utterance to the mere circumstantial pomp of such a scene no
imagination availeth. || Nor doth the understanding labour less. ||

' ' The Archangel with the trump of God, riding sublime in the midst of
Heaven, and sending through the widest dominions of death and the grave
that sharp summons which divideth the solid earth, and || rings through the
caverns of the hollow deep, || piercing the dull cold ear of death and the
grave with the knell of their departed reign, || the reign of death, the sprout-
ing of the grave || with the vitality of the reign || of life, the second birth of
living things, || the reunion of body and soul, the one from unconscious sleep,
the other from apprehensive and unquiet abodes, the congregation of all
generations over whom the stream of time hath swept this outstretches my
understanding no less than the material imagery confuses my imagination. ||
And when I bring the picture to my heart || its feelings are overwhelmed ;
when I fancy this quick and conscious frame one instant reawakened, the
next reinvested, the next summoned || before the face of the Almighty Judge, ||
now begotten, now sifted through every secret corner, my poor soul possessed
with the memory of its misdeeds, submitted to the scorching eye of my
Maker, my fate depending upon his lips, my everlasting changeless fate, I
shriek [shrink ?] and shiver with mortal apprehension ; and when I fancy the
myriads || of men all standing thus explored and known, || I seem to hear
their shiverings like the aspen leaves in the still evenings of autumn. || Pale
fear possesseth every countenance, || and blank conviction every quaking
heart. || They stand like men upon the perilous edge || of battle, wjthholden
from speech and pinched for breath through excess of struggling emotions
shame, remorse, mortal apprehension, and trembling hope. "

One must needs mutter, Tuba minim spargens somtni, and the rest, for
some time, to reconsecrate the sullied magnificence of the scene. But, from
our special side, remember to compare this blank verse with Ruskin's ; note
the failure to make any symphony even of such rhythmical fragments as there
are, and own the terrible possibilities of ornate style blundered and
caricatured.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 359

writer ; and it is certainly improbable that he ever
revised much. His often -mentioned and sometimes
reviled habit of quotation, moreover, to some extent
justifies Landor's, in other respects, excessive objection
to quotation generally, after a fashion which may not
have struck those who have not accustomed themselves
to the rhythmical point of view. 1 But much of his more
general and abstract criticism (such as most of his survey
of poetry in general) is an admirable " standard " example,
sinewy, not inharmonious, and altogether a fit vehicle for
that, in some ways, unmatched critical faculty of his. And
he also and often wrote in the more elaborately imagina-
tive and rhythmical way, as in these two famous passages,
the description of his haunts at Winterslow in the
" Farewell to Essay-writing," and the curious indignant
agony lost love forcing truth and praise from present
hatred of the reference to Coleridge which closes the
English Poets, as " Poetry in General " had opened it.

In this hope, while " fields are dark and ways are mire," I follow
the same direction to a neighbouring wood, where, having gained the
dry, level greensward, I can see way for a mile before me, closed in
on each side by copsewood, and ending in a point of light more or

1 Because it is almost certain that (unless it is chosen with special attention
to the point, which can seldom be possible) the rhythm of the quotation will
be different from that of the context.

360 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

gleaming vistas | appeared beyond ; | so | we have only | at *any

~ ^ ^ _^

But I may say of him here, that he is the only person I ever
knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius. He is the
only person from whom I ever learnt anything. There is only
one thing he could learn from me in return, but that he has not.

He was the first | poet | I ever | knew. | His genius | at that
time | had angelic | wings, | and fed | on manna. | He talked on |
for ever. | His thoughts [ did not seem | to come | with labour |
and effort, | but as if borne | on the gusts | of genius, \ and as
if | the wings of his | imagination | lifted him } from off | his feet. |
His voice | rolled [ on the ear | like the pealing | organ, | and its
sound | alone | was the music | of thought. | His mind | was
clothed | with wings ; | and raised | on them, | he lifted | philosophy |

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1830-1860 361

Neither of these is faultless. The first is not improved,
on the principle given above, by the quotations, or by
the hackneyed, though not definitely quoted, " weltering
in its gore." " We walk through life as through a narrow
path " is a too definite blank verse opening a new period,
and so unmistakable. In the second, the repetition of
" genius " in the early lines had been better avoided, and
the juxtaposition of " years " and " ears " towards the end
is a most unlucky oversight or why should we not say
" over-sound " ? But, on the whole, they make a singularly
beautiful pair, and I think it is not fanciful to discern a
rather curious similarity in the general principles of their
rhythm. It will be noticed in my scansion, that, though
paeons and dochmiacs are not banished, shorter feet
distinctly predominate, and there is a great deal of
simple iamb, trochee, and spondee. Not merely the
blank verse, but divers other intrinsically and separately
metrical fragments may be discerned, such as the opening
What a walk | is this | to me !

which has a strange Browningesque ring about it, as if
James Lee's wife, on landing at Weymouth or South-
ampton from the deck of the Brittany steamer, where we
last hear her speak, had gone on to Wiltshire and con-
tinued the poem there in no different key. 1 But you will

1 That of

" Oh ! | what a dawn | of day !
How the March | sun feels | like May," etc.

362 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

never find these tags of rhythm illicitly joining themselves
to others and making actual metre : the prose dominant
reigns supreme. I do not think Hazlitt was consciously
aiming at anything like De Quincey's or Landor's style.
In 1818 indeed, when the Coleridge piece was written,
he could know nothing of either but Landor's verse.
But to whatsoever he aspired, he attained this.
Lamb. When we come to Lamb, we come to one of the
exceptions. That he could have written paragraphs
that he did write sentences exquisitely rhythmical, is
certain. But it was scarcely ever his humour to do the
first, and not often to do the second. His faithful and
constant following of the Elizabethans in the wide sense
(to say that he was not " a sedulous ape " of Browne and
Burton and Fuller is, I think, a mistake) must, to some
extent, have interfered with any such production, by
distracting his view. But the very certainty and success
with which he assimilated the products of this imitation,
and combined them with that of others, especially Sterne,
proved this still more. His style is a perfectly achieved
conglomerate, the particles conglomerated being percept-
ible, but indissolubly united, and in fact unified, by the
mortar of his own idiosyncrasy. Yet in actual continuity
of sound, as distinguished from sense, the whole is too
much broken up to achieve the highest rhythmical results.
They are, it may be said, not wanted ; and I heartily
agree. But there are some excellent people who, when
you say that something is not somewhere, resent the
statement, as if " and it ought to be " were implied.
The uniquely broken bits of Lamb's composition would
be ill exchanged for fresh examples of a continuous
harmony which we can find elsewhere. In the middle
style, moreover that which aims at and achieves con-
cinnity of rhythm without going higher, he was,' in his
less fantastic moods, an absolutely consummate master.
There is nobody like him (unless it be Goldsmith) between
Addison and Thackeray, and I do not myself care to
place the four in order of merit.
Leigh Hunt. Leigh Hunt, on the other hand much Lamb's inferior

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1830-1860 363

in this way, and incapable of the other ; not able any-
where to reach the excellence of Hazlitt's rarer moods as
exemplified above, or the serried vigour of his more
ordinary argumentative passages ; here, as in all ways, a
slightly vulgarised companion to both of them neverthe-
less was no contemptible master of this middle style, and
could at times go beyond it. The following version of
the " Daughter of Hippocrates " story, though scarcely
worth scanning, except at the close, is worth reading
throughout, with attention to rhythm, to show how near
it approaches to the test ; and it has the additional
interest of contrasting with Mandeville's version, 1 at the
very beginning of English prose in the full sense of the
term. It has further to be said, in Hunt's favour, that
though he was certainly, in a sense, what he has been
called, " the father of all such as penny-a-line" he never
descended to the slovenliness of which, with tawdriness as
a twin-daughter, penny-a-lining may too justly be said to
have been the parent. His prose is even free from the
flaccidity and the running-at-the-mouth which too often
distinguish his verse ; and if he did not always write as
he writes in the following passage, your ear may expect
something not very far inferior in a reasonably continued
reading of him.

In the time of the Norman reign in Sicily, a vessel bound from
that island for Smyrna was driven by a westerly wind upon the
island of Cos. The crew did not know where they were, though
they had often visited the island ; for the trading towns lay in other
quarters, and they saw nothing before them but woods and solitudes.
They found, however, a comfortable harbour ; and the wind having
fallen in the night, they went on shore next morning for water.
The country proved as solitary as they thought it ; which was the
more extraordinary, inasmuch as it was very luxuriant, full of wild
figs and grapes, with a rich uneven ground, and stocked with goats
and other animals, who fled whenever they appeared. The bees
were remarkably numerous ; so that the wild honey, fruits, and
delicious water, especially one spring which fell into a beautiful
marble basin, made them more and more wonder, at every step,
that they could see no human inhabitants.

Thus idling about and wondering, stretching themselves now and

1 V. sup. pp. 64, 65.

364 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

then among the wild thyme and grass, and now getting up to look
at some specially fertile place which another called them to see,
and which they thought might be turned to fine trading purpose,
they came upon a mound covered with trees, which looked into a
flat, wide lawn of rank grass, with a house at the end of it. They
crept nearer towards the house along the mound, still continuing
among the trees, for fear they were trespassing at last upon some-
body's property. It had a large garden wall at the back, as much
covered with ivy as if it had been built of it. Fruit-trees looked
over the wall with an unpruned thickness ; and neither at the back
nor front of the house were there any signs of humanity. It was an
ancient marble building, where glass was not to be expected in the
windows ; but it was much dilapidated, and the grass grew up over the

Cariyie. There are few authors to whom it is more interesting
to apply the tests and methods of our present enquiry
than to the two chief prose writers of the mid-nineteenth
century, Carlyle and Macaulay. It is true that the
changes of popular taste and interest, which have perhaps
made such an enquiry less unpalatable in itself to readers
than it would have been then, have also ousted both from
their old pride of place, and so have made it less interest-
ing as applying to them. But once more, these changes,
except as matter of record, are as nothing to history.

The contrast still almost startling even to those to
whom it has long been familiar between Carlyle's
original style and his characteristic one has already been
referred to, but it must necessarily be dealt with again, by
illustration as well as by discussion, in the present place.
In the first of the following extracts which was also the
first passage of the first original book that Carlyle
published there is absolutely nothing, in genus or
species, to distinguish it from that standard style of
which we have said so much ; and the indiscernibility

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 365

applies to rhythm. It avoids, with excellent success, the
extremes, of dulness and of clatter, to which that style
is liable ; it is not so very far below the best, such as
Southey's own, in that respect. But it presents no
specially musical characteristics ; it does not invite scan-
ning, or defy it, or make terms with it. It is written ev
x/aXot? \6yois (to adopt one proposed sense of that dis-
puted Aristotelianism) in simple prose if anything ever
was.

Among the writers of the concluding part of the last century
there is none more deserving of our notice than Friedrich Schiller.
Distinguished alike for the splendour of his intellectual faculties,
and the elevation of his tastes and feelings, he has left behind
him in his works a noble emblem of these great qualities ; and the
reputation which he thus enjoys, and has merited, excites our
attention the more, on considering the circumstances under which
it was acquired. Schiller had peculiar difficulties to strive with,
and his success has likewise been peculiar. Much of his life was
deformed by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at middle
age ; he composed in a language then scarcely settled into form,
or admitted to a rank among the cultivated languages of Europe ;
yet his writings are remarkable for their extent and variety as well
as their intrinsic excellence ; and his own countrymen are not his
only, or perhaps his principal, admirers. It is difficult to collect or
interpret the general voice ; but the world, no less than Germany,
seems already to have dignified him with the reputation of a classic ;
to have enrolled him among that select number whose works belong
not wholly to any age or nation, but who, having instructed their
own contemporaries, are claimed as instructors by the great family
of mankind, and set apart for many centuries from the common
oblivion which soon overtakes the mass of authors, as it does the
mass of other men.

A few years and this " tame villatic fowl " becomes a
kind of roc.

366 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

How sharp and strange if the reader has read these
two passages in sequence, and either as things actually
unfamiliar or with that temporary suspension of familiarity
which is possible and almost necessary for the critic
must the contrast between them have been ! The psilotes,
the " bareness " (in quite a decent and respectable sense)
of the first is, in the second, clothed and broken, varied
and accidented, and finished with colour ; being, by dint
of these very changes, changed further from a bead-roll of
not inharmoniously but evenly flowing syllables into
symphonised rhythms irregularly, indeed, and only
eccentrically symphonic, but at any rate polyphonic in
almost the highest degree. Only once, at the close of
the first paragraph, does blank verse proffer a too officious
and obvious aid to the transformation. And, just before

1 The cluster of shorts here (for even " lab" is a " long" of the shortest)
seems to require a "sixer."

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 367

it, the same dangerous reinforcement is deftly refused ; for
though

Or what is Nature ? Ha ! why do I not

suggests actual verse, the following words
Name thee God ?

throw the suggestion out 1 immediately. By cunningly
inserted epithets which arrest attention to particular
syllabic values, by poetic inversions like " tumultuously
eddy," poetic synthesis of words in themselves indifferently
poetic and prosaic like " mad witch's hair," the whole
thing becomes rhythmical, and forces the rhythm, broken
and irregular as it may be, upon the ear.

It was no wonder that bewildered contemporaries
called this " prose run mad," that it seemed to them like
the witch's hair itself. Yet some of them, such as the
youthful Thackeray, could rally at once from the shock
and perceive the beauty. 2 The next generation, more
fortunate, hardly felt the shock at all.

In Sartor itself, and in The French Revolution, the
method is seen at its height ; nor perhaps ever afterwards
(except in Latter-day Pamphlets] did he repeat the dose
in equal strength. For pleasure one might well repro-
duce and analyse all the famous things the Bastille, the
tragic agony of the Varennes disaster, the Tenth of
August, the trial and death of the king, the retribution of
Robespierre, a dozen others ; but space forbids, nor does
system require. 3 His own method, quite infinite in
variety of application, is comparatively simple in principle,
though, as in other cases, uncommonly few people (I hardly
know any except Patrick Alexander, though Trollope's in
The Warden is not bad) have succeeded in doing more in
the way of imitation than burlesque of it. It is at first

1 It might return as that of an octosyllabic couplet ; but not naturally.

2 " The real beauty which lurks among all these odd words and twisted
sentences." Times review of The French Re-volution ("Oxford" edition of
Thackeray's Works, vol. i. p. 72).

3 Here, more perhaps than anywhere else, there may excusably be
repetition of the warning that the rhythm of the authors selected cannot
possibly be exhibited in anything like completeness. To do so with Carlyle
would require a monograph double the length of this chapter.

368 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

sight a direct negation of the general principle of con-
summate rhythmical prose, which is the avoidance of
breach or jaggedness. Carlyle's, on the contrary, seems
to be a sort of ruined mosaic, a piece of cloisonne
enamel with the metal partitions wrenched, twisted, or
wholly wanting. Yet when you have got the key-note of
it, you find not merely that individual rhythm-fragments *
are constantly of extreme beauty, but that, in some
incomprehensible manner, they are united together by a
master harmony that overspreads, underlies, pervades the
apparent jangle. Every now and then, he will con-
descend to interpose somewhat clearer evidence, for a
sentence or two, of pure prose tune ; but the method on
the whole is essentially Wagnerian, and a man might be
excused for saying when he first heard Tannhauser, " How
remarkably like Carlyle ! "

Later and even earlier in his Essays, where he had
to consult the prejudices of editors and the feelings of
readers, to some extent at any rate he adopted a mode,
mixed in yet another sense, which may be not badly
illustrated by the following passage, and as to which I
have adopted the plan of partial scansion, to contrast
with the unscanned Schiller and the wholly scanned
Teufelsdrockh. Here there is, on one side, a sort of
menstruum, or general carrying basis, of standard plain-
ness, while on the other you get a kind of business-like
item-arranged cataloguing which reminds you, with a
contrast as striking as the resemblance, of Macaulay.
But in each case the whole is shot or spangled with
picturesque and musical phrase, which makes it a thing
as different from Macaulay's as from that of a merely
" standardised " practitioner of the better class.

Illustration of this might be multiplied almost end-
lessly, but the following may suffice :

For you fare | along, | on some narrow | roadway, | through

1 They often show something like what is called in verse catalexis, and
require an unusual allowance of monosyllabic or half-feet. While even by
these I do not think that in his case the splitting of words, so often mentioned,
is to be avoided.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 369

manner. Towering rock barriers rise sky-high before you, and
behind you, and around you ; intricate the outgate ! The roadway
is narrow, footing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where
it will behove you to mind your paces ; one false step, and you
will need no second ; in the gloomy jaws of the abyss you vanish,
and the spectral winds howl requiem. Somewhat better are the
suspension bridges, made of bamboo and leather, though they swing
like see-saws ; men are stationed with lassos, to gin you dexterously,
and fish you up from the torrent, if you trip there.

Through this kind of country did San Martin march ; straight
towards San lago, to fight the Spaniards and deliver Chile. For
ammunition waggons he had sorras, sledges, canoe-shaped boxes,
made of dried bull's hide. His cannons were carried on the back
of mules, each cannon on two mules judiciously harnessed ; on the
packsaddle of your foremost mule there rested with firm girths a
long strong pole ; the other end of which, forked end, we suppose,
rested, with like girths, on the packsaddle of the hindmost mule ;
your cannon was slung with leathern straps on this pole, and so
travelled, swaying and dangling, yet moderately secure. In the
knapsack of each soldier was eight days' provender, dried beef
ground into snuff powder, with a modicum of pepper, and some
slight seasoning of biscuit or maize meal ; store of onions, of garlic,
was not wanting ; Paraguay tea could be boiled at eventide, by fire

colt dance | of unima|ginable Dreams, j Had he not left much
behind him in the Pampas mother, mistress, what not ; and was

eternal | stars ! | Way-worn sentries with difficulty keep themselves
awake ; tired mules chew barley rations, or doze on three legs ; the

2 B

370 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Here " roar of mountain cataracts, horrors of bottomless
chasms" arranges its contrasting foot-values mono-
syllable, amphibrach, dactyl-cretic ; trochee, paeon, mono-
syllable, trochee as delicately as if it were De Quincey
or Landor, Taylor or Browne. 1 But presto ! and the very
woods and echoes howl at you " in an almost preter-
natural manner " possibly, but certainly in a very easy
conversational style. With a true dream-contradiction,
the not-in-the-least-astonished soldiers find themselves
" all steadily snoring in the heart of the Andes, under, the
eternal stars," and in the same way these stars themselves,
Canopus and the Southern Cross, find themselves chosen
from all the host of Heaven to glitter down on the
intrusive and incongruous " snorers," because of the
desirable combination of amphibrach, third paeon, and
monosyllable.

Macauiay. There is hardly a point in the whole range of possible
literary criticism where the contrast between Carlyle and
Macauiay is not amusing ; but on most of these points
this contrast is so obvious, not to say glaring, that it
needs very little comment in detail. In our department,
perhaps because that department has had so few workers
in it hitherto, a slight examination may not be profitless.
That, on first and undiscriminating hearing, the two are
extraordinarily different needs no impressing ; that before
long a certain community in difference the love of short
and abruptly separated clauses and sentences will
appear, needs hardly more. But this does not* take us
very far.

Macauiay had, in fact, two styles, which he sometimes

1 How interesting it is to think that there are persons " with ttuo ears
erect, and bearing the outward semblance of men," who would take this for
a hexameter !

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 371

mixed, but also sometimes kept apart. The one was
what he is most celebrated for, the true " Tom's snipsnap,"
illustrated in the second of the following extracts. It
seems sometimes as if the writer has joined a secret and
yet open society the principle of which was to use no
stops but full ones, with an occasional and grudging
comma. The sentences come out like cartridges from a
magazine, or packets of something unwholesome from one
of the hideous erections on station-platforms. Sometimes
the character is, as here, emphasised to the point of
ludicrousness by arithmetical details (compare the passage
from Carlyle, not dissimilar in subject, above given).
These sentences, or sentencelets, are not exactly in-
harmonious in themselves, but they do not attempt
harmony. You rush to the end of them, and it is the
end-words alone that, on the old principle, (v. sup. on
Hurd and Addison) seem to have received some care
from the writer as to their rhythm.

half | redeemed | his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was
wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets
were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine,
were marshalled by the heralds under Garter-King-at-arms. The
judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points
of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the
Upper House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order
from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior
baron present led the way, George Eliott, Lord Heathfield, recently
ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets
and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed
by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl- Marshal of the realm, by the great

372 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all
came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble
bearing. The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long
galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited
the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered
together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous
empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the repre-
sentatives of every science and of every art. There were seated
round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of
Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Common-
wealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country
in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her
majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the
imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire
thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against
Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of
freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There
were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar
of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that <easel
which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many
writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble
matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark
and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of
erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded
with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive,

faith. | There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race,
the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and
music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the

1 Some points in this are too obvious for comment, except perhaps in a
note. The pivotal, or rather spring-board, effect of the repeated " there "
is of course the chief. I do not think "grenadiers" and "cavalry," even

with the full benefit of "grenadiers," an ideal pair of clause-tips in sound ;
but the picture to the eye the motionless rows of peaked caps and the
more restless figures of the horsemen no doubt determined the choice.

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1830-1860 373

By this time July was far advanced ; and the state of the city

was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the
inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and disease than by
the fire of the enemy. Yet that fire was sharper and more constant

than ever. One of the gates was beaten in ; one of the bastions
was laid in ruins ; but the breaches made by day were repaired by
night with indefatigable activity. Every attack was still repelled. But
the fighting men of the garrison were so much exhausted that they
could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in the act of striking

at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very small quantity

of grain remained, and was doled out my mouthfuls. The stock of
salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison

appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the
slain who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few

could afford to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five

shillings and sixpence. Nine horses were still alive, and but barely
alive. They were so lean that little meat was likely to be found
upon them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food.
The people perished so fast that it was impossible for the survivors
to perform the rights of sepulture. There was scarcely a cellar in

which some corpse was not decaying. Such was the extremity of
distress that the rats who came to feast in those hideous dens

were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish, caught in
the river, was not to be purchased with money. The only price for

which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of oat-
meal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders,

made existence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned
by the stench exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half
dead.

First were rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels
of meal. Then came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon,

kegs of butter, sacks of pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy. Not
many hours before, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a
pound of salted hide had been weighed out with niggardly care to
every fighting man. The ration which each now received was three
pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of pease. It is easy
to imagine with what tears grace was said over the suppers of that

evening. There was little sleep on either side of the wall. The bon-

374 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

fires shone bright along the whole circuit of the ramparts. The Irish
guns continued to roar all night, and all night the bells of the
rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal of joyous

The rhythm of the first extract is as different as
possible from that of the second in the most obvious
characteristics ; less so, perhaps, on re-examination. <T he
writer is here, as often, evidently under the influence of
Gibbon. There is the same rotund allusiveness " the
historian of the Roman empire " has a double or treble
appropriateness and " the voluptuous charms of her to
whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his
faith " is Gibbon, almost premier choix t for " Mrs. Fitzher-
bert." The proper names, where used, are introduced with
special attention to sound, and the sentences are varied in
length, with special attention to sound likewise. It will
probably depend very much on individual taste whether
the full Gibbonian roll the flux and reflux of that
majestic wave that kept time with the revolutions of more
than a millennium is held to have been attained or not.
But at any rate here is good standard style, supercharged
in rhythm with something of reversion to Burke, and even
to Bolingbroke, for strongly rhetorical effect, not irreminis-
cent of Johnson himself, as in the phrases about the
pinchbeck Johnson, Dr. Parr, 2 but certainly reminding

1 I have thought it well to indicate Macaulay's fancy for trochaic endings.
He contrasts them, of course, with some monosyllables and other feet
generally, and avoids them at the paragraph close. But the staccato style
undoubtedly invites them, and so, in very modern work, gives a throw-back to
the most ancient.

2 Speaking of Parr, I have been reminded, and ought to have needed no
reminder, of the shorthand description of his style given by that piercer of

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 375

one most of the third raiser of style in the eighteenth
century.

I have elsewhere protested l against the undervaluation
of Macaulay's style, and may, therefore, claim freedom
from prejudice if I say that it cannot be ranked very high
from our present point of view. Even the old simple test
want of variety would suffice to condemn it ; for, with
the exception of the difference of its two kinds, noted
above, there is nothing to be hoped for, and nothing to be
found, but the monotonous tick-tack and snip-snap on the
one hand, and the not much less monotonous balance or
undulation (itself something of an amplification of this
snip-snap) on the other. For purposes of exposition, and
(less luckily) for purposes of persuasion with the ordinary
reader, it has exceedingly high qualifications. Wherever
dolus non latet in directions political and other ; wherever
it is desirable that a tolerably intelligent but not extra-
ordinarily acute or attentive reader should receive a fair
sweeping view of a multitude of more or less complicated
details, there is hardly any style which surpasses it " for
use." It may even give, to a somewhat blunt but not
quite deaf ear, a pleasure resembling, in prose, that which
the snip-snap or amplified couplets of the eighteenth
century used to give to ears of the same kind in verse.
Indeed, Macaulay stands to eighteenth-century verse (in
his prose, not his verse) much as Landor and De Quincey
and Ruskin do to nineteenth. But the din and clatter of
his method is certainly not what you want, when the ear
is voluptuously inclined and artistically trained. In the
great examples which have been given above, and will be
given below, nothing repeats anything else the individual
notes, and the polyphonic groupings of words and word-
batches, are as unlike as the productions of Nature ; while
Macaulay's are as like as the productions of machinery.

Those styles in which the somewhat toneless and The novelists

Miss Austen

windbags, "the Canon Schidnischmidt " : "And a great many other things and Peacock,
without a great many other things." It may go with a less-pointed remark
of my own on Jeffrey's (v. sup. p. 355).

1 Corrected Impressions (London, 1895), P- 9^.

376 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

colourless rhythm of the standard is chequered and flushed
by a certain dose of the more elaborately rhythmical,
increase in number and interest as we go through the
century. Its favourite and characteristic production, the
novel, encourages them ; and the influence of the Time-
Spirit accentuates and enforces the encouragement.
Except in passages of description, or in addresses to the
reader, such as those to which the immeasurable short-
sightedness of certain critics objects in Thackeray, the
novelist can hardly exceed the rhythm of conversation, or
that of the graver or lighter standard style, without run-
ning the risk of being irksome to his readers, as a certain
famous French saying has it. Yet most great novelists
have had rhythmical complexions " favours " in the old
sense more or less their own, after fashions which sho ( uld
be very well known to their readers, but which would be
difficult to illustrate satisfactorily here, unless we could
give a chapter, and a very long one, to them. Thus Miss
Austen has that ironic " fingering " of the standard which
induces some deeply-to-be-commiserated persons to call
her " stilted " :

You would have told me that we seemed born for each other, or
some nonsense of that kind, which would have distressed me beyond
conception ; my cheeks would have been as red as your roses ; I
would not have had you by for the world

where the decent propriety of the expression, the manifest
hypocrisy of the speaker, and the ironic touches of the
artist, are all inextricably married together. Or one might
take that apex and coronal, or coronalled apex, of Peacock's
piercing crispness, the logic of Seithenyn on life and death :

They have not made it known to me ; for the best of all reasons,
that one can only know the truth. For if that which we think we
know is not truth, it is something which we do not know. A man
cannot know his own death. For while he knows anything he is
alive ; at least I never heard of a dead man who knew anything, or
pretended to know anything if he had so pretended, I should have
told him to his face that he was no dead man.

We cannot, of course, cast the net very widely for
examples, but Peacock himself, Disraeli, Dickens, and

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 377

Thackeray may perhaps suffice. The selection given from
Lord Beaconsfield will probably make it unnecessary to give
any from the first Lord Lytton, for if there was no love
lost between the two men, it was perhaps in part because
the two styles, at their most elaborate, were very close
together. And though the author of Coningsby and
Lothair had nothing like the range, and at no part of his
range anything like l the occasional ease and finish, of
the author of Pelham and Kenelm Chillingly, the needs of
the present occasion will, I think, be satisfied with the
proposed allotment.

That part of Peacock's writing which is most delectable
to true Peacockians may the shadow and the glitter of
body and tail never be less for them ! would serve us
little for illustration. The admirable crispness of its
dialogue, and the occasional sharp outline of its comment,
have rhythm of their own no doubt, as, it has been
remarked, everything has ; but it is scarcely of the kind
we are discussing, and is rather to be perceived than
analysed. This kind may be illustrated as follows :

Miss Susannah often wandered among the mountains alone,
even to some distance from the farm-house. Sometimes she
descended into the bottom of the dingles, to the black rocky beds
of the torrents, and dreamed away hours at the feet of the cataracts.
One spot in particular, from which she had at first shrunk with
terror, became by degrees her favourite haunt. A path turning
and returning at acute angles, led down a steep wood-covered slope
to the edge of a chasm, where a pool, or resting place of a torrent,

1 More especially he had nothing like the almost classical concentration,
and freedom from redundance, which Bulwer could display when he too
seldom chose, as in the magnificent ghost-story which is his Wandering
WilliJs Tale, and the recognition of which, like the recognition of that, used
to be an esoteric touchstone of criticism long before the vulgar knew of it.
But it so happens that this concerns us less than his "Corinthian " indulgences.
See remarks on Peacock in the text. (Examples or discussions of the second
great group of Victorian novelists, from the Brontes onward, will be found
later.)

378 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

depth | without | disturbing | its eternal | repose. At the opposite
extremity of the pool, the rocks almost met at their summits, the
trees of the opposite banks intermingled their leaves, and another
cataract plunged from the pool into a chasm on which the sunbeams
never gleamed. High above, on both sides, the steep woody slopes
of the dingle soared into the sky ; and from a fissure in the rock,
on which the little path terminated, a single gnarled and twisted oak
stretched itself over the pool, forming a fork with its boughs at a
short distance from the rock. Miss Susannah often sat on the
rock, with her feet resting on this tree : in time, she made her seat
on the tree itself, with her feet hanging over the abyss ; and at
length she accustomed herself to lie upon its trunk, with her side
on the mossy bole of the fork, and an arm round one of the branches.
From this position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected
in the pool, which from its bank was but a mass of darkness. The
first time she reclined in this manner, her heart beat audibly ; in
time, she lay down as calmly as on the mountain heather : <the
perception of the sublime was probably heightened by an inter-
mingled sense of danger ; and perhaps that indifference to life,
which early disappointment forces upon sensitive minds, was
necessary to the first experiment. There was, in the novelty and
strangeness of the position, an excitement which never wholly
passed away, but which became gradually subordinate to the
influence, at once tranquillising and elevating, of the mingled eternity
of motion, sound, and solitude.

This is " standard " freed from over-rhetorical tendency,
and not intending rhythm greatly, but achieving it
sufficiently. 1 It is " medium-rhythmed."

If, on the contrary, any " gent," reversing the wishes
of him whom Mr. Punch's waiter so cruelly complied
with, wants, not the " lighter and drier vintage " of
Melincourt or Elphin, but a wine, not merely full of body,
but mousseux with rhetoric, he should surely be suited
here :

Lord Favoured by nature and by nature's God, we produced the

Beaconsfield. lyre of David ; we gave you Isaiah and Ezekiel ; they, are our
Olynthians, our Philippics. Favoured by nature we still remain ;
but in exact proportion as we have been favoured by nature we
have been persecuted by man. After a thousand struggles ; after
acts of heroic courage that Rome has never equalled ; deeds of

1 I think Macaulay had read Peacock, different as were their spirits, and I
could produce at least one unmistakable parallel passage.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 379

divine patriotism that Athens and Sparta and Carthage have
never excelled ; we have endured fifteen hundred years of super-
natural slavery, during which every device that can degrade or
destroy man has been the destiny that we have sustained and
baffled. The Hebrew child has entered adolescence only to
learn that he was the pariah of that ungrateful Europe that owes
to him the best part of its laws, a fine portion of its literature, all
its religion. Great poets require a public ; we have been content
with the immortal melodies that we sung more than two thousand
years ago by the waters of Babylon and wept. They record our
triumphs ; they solace our affliction. Great orators are the
creatures of popular assemblies ; we were permitted only by
stealth to meet even in our temples. And as for great writers,
the catalogue is not blank. What are all the schoolmen, Aquinas
himself, to Maimonides ? And as for modern philosophy, all
springs from Spinoza.

creation. I speak not of the past ; though were I to enter into
the history of the lords of melody, you would find it the annals of
Hebrew genius. But at this moment even, musical Europe is ours.
There is not a company of singers, not an orchestra in a single
capital, that is not crowded with our children under the feigned
names which they adopt to conciliate the dark aversion which your
posterity will some day disclaim with .shame and disgust. Almost
every great composer, skilled musician, almost every voice that
ravishes you with its transporting strains, springs from our tribes.

1 I think we must have one of the slurs more than once referred to here.

380 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

The catalogue is too vast to enumerate ; too illustrious to dwell for
a moment on secondary names, however eminent. Enough for us
that the three great creative minds to whose exquisite inventions
all nations at this moment yield, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn,
are of Hebrew race ; and little do your men of fashion, your
muscadins of Paris, and your dandies of London, as they thrill into
raptures at the notes of a Pasta or a Grisi, little do they suspect
that they are offering their homage " to the sweet singers of Israel " !

This is Burke, or perhaps Bolingbroke himself, by the
waters of Babylon not weeping, but exulting over the
" flat-nosed Franks " who colonised Lincolnshire and
Gal way and singing with all the opportunities of his
ampler organisation. I protest that the passage I have
scanned seems to me, though in bravura, a very fine
passage, and, according to its own mode, almost faultless
in rhythm. 1 The abundance of dochmiacs is, I think,
real, and very characteristic.

Dickens. It is obviously difficult to write about Dickens here
in any fashion that shall even really be adequate ; to
write about him in a manner which shall be satisfactory
to the various classes of his readers is still more obviously
impossible. A great deal of his work the vast majority
and the most delightful part beyond question neither
challenges, nor could properly admit, examination of our
sort. On the contrary, a majority, perhaps even larger,
of his attempts at rhetoric and prose-poetry, are certainly
not held to be successes by most good critics. The best
of the kind, and a really good one, has always seemed to
me to be the overture of the famous " Death of Steer-
forth " in David Copperfield :

It was a murky confusion here and there blotted with a
colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel of flying
clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater
heights in the clouds than there were depths below thern to the
bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the
wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance
of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.
There had been a wind all day ; and it was rising then, with an

1 The description of Jerusalem in Tancred should follow it, if I had more
room.

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 381

extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased,
and the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.

But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow,
harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could
scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the
night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not
short), the leaders turned about, | or came to a dead stop ; and we
were often | in serious apprehension that the coach | would be
blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain | came up before this storm,
like showers of steel ; | and, at those times, when there was any
shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a
sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been
in Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had
never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We
came to Ipswich very late, having had to fight every inch of
ground since we were ten miles out of London ; and found | a
cluster of people in the market-place, | who had risen from their
beds in the night, | fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, |
congregating about the inn-yard while we | changed horses, told us
of great sheets of lead | having been ripped off a high church-tower, |
and flung into a by-street, which they then | blocked up. Others
had to tell of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages,
who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole
ricks scattered about the roads and fields. | Still there was no
abatement in the storm, | but it blew harder.

As we struggled on, | nearer and nearer to the sea, from which |
this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, | its force became
more and more | terrific. *? Long before we saw the sea, its spray |
was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. | The water was
out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth ;
and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, | and had its stress of
little breakers setting | heavily towards us. When we came within |
sight of the sea, the waves \ on the horizon, | caught at intervals
above the rolling abyss, were | like glimpses of another shore with
towers | and buildings. When at last we got into | the town, the
people came out to their doors, | all aslant, and with streaming
hair, 1 \ making a wonder of the mail that had | come through such
a night.

If I have marked the numerous blank-verse fragments
here, it is with no Schadenfreude, and certainly out of
no unfairness. How difficult it is to keep blank verse
out of " numerous " prose, we have allowed fully, and
seen constantly, while we shall see more still. And that

1 Not blank verse, and a fine phrase.

382 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Dickens, in his passages of the same class, was apt to
abuse it, is scarcely matter for serious discussion. In
this passage I hardly think that he can be fairly charged
with abusing it ; for, despite the numerous and, as has
been shown, not seldom consecutive examples, they are
often (if scarcely always) resolvable in reading into prose
rhythm proper. But, at the same time, it must be
confessed that the prevalence of merely iambic cadence,
which the presence of much blank verse almost necessarily
implies, though it is not incompatible with real rhythmical
beauty, argues, in every case but Mr. Ruskin's, if not
even in his (we shall consider this point, if we may), a
certain poverty in rhythmical resources, a no doubt
unconscious conviction that if you want to make prose
harmonious you must " dash and brew it " with the
methods of verse itself. And this, if not what Ascham,
in his ill-temper at something else, calls " a foul wrong
way," is certainly not the more excellent one.

Thackeray. When I say that I hardly know any master of English
prose-rhythm greater, in his way, than Thackeray, and
that I certainly do not know any one with so various
and pervasive a command, I may seem to provoke the
answer, " Oh ! you are, if not a maniac, at any rate a
maniaque. The obsession of Titmarsh blinds and deafens
you." Nevertheless, I say it ; and will maintain it. That
he seldom perhaps never tried diploma-pieces of the
most elaborate kind may, of course, be admitted ; the
cap-and-bells, which he never wholly laid aside for more
than a minute or two, forbade that. Yet the first of the
two long passages which I have selected is not in this way
far behind some may think that it is at least on a level
with the most greatly-intending scenes of description
that we have had or shall have ; and the second, as a
piece of reflection, will be hard to beat in sermon or essay,
history or tractate, from Raleigh to Newman. But the
most remarkable thing about Thackeray, in our connec-
tion a thing impossible fully to illustrate here, is his
mastery of that mixed style " shot with rhythm " which

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 383

has been noticed. Even in his earliest and most grotesque
extravaganzas you will rarely find a discordant sentence
the very vulgarisms and mis- spellings come like
solecisms from a pair of pretty lips and uttered in a
musical voice. 1 As there never was a much hastier writer,
it is clear that the man thought in rhythm that the
words, as they flowed from his pen, brought the harmony
with them. Even his blank verse and his couplets in
prose, never, I think, in any one instance unintentional,
but deliberately used for burlesque purposes, have a
diabolical quality and, as the wine merchants say, " breed "
about them, which some very respectable " poets " have
never achieved.

In the first passage there are two noteworthy sayings.
He tells you that "you can't put the thing down in
prose," and then he proceeds to do it. And further, he
opens the longer, and immeasurably the finer, passage of
the doing by the words : " Perhaps it is best for a man
of fancy to make his own description." He does not,
luckily, let this deprive us of his ; but I have taken the
hint so far as to let any " man of fancy " do his scansion
here for himself, as I do it for myself every time that I
read the piece. I can promise that not in one foot or one
syllable will it fail. There is, unavoidably, a blank verse
or two, but it will be found that in much the larger
number of cases the imminence of one is escamote with
extraordinary art.

There should have been a poet in our company to describe that
charming little bay of Glaucus, into which we entered on the 26th
of September, in the first steamboat that ever disturbed its beautiful
waters. You can't put down in prose that delicious episode of
natural poetry ; it ought to be done in a symphony, full of sweet
melodies and swelling harmonies ; or sung in a strain of clear
crystal iambics, such as Milnes knows how to write. A mere map,
drawn in words, gives the mind no notion of that exquisite nature.
What do mountains become in type, or rivers in Mr. Vizetelly's best

1 And so, later, the abbreviations and familiarities lose all the bad effect
that they have in Augustan style.

384 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

white houses | twinkle. I can see a little minaret, and some spread-
ing palm trees ; but, beyond these, the description would answer as
well for Bantry Bay as for Makri. You could write so far, nay,
much more particularly and grandly, without seeing the place at all,
and after reading Beaufort's Caramania, which gives you not the
least notion of it.

Suppose the great hydrographer of the admiralty himself can't
describe it, who surveyed the place ; suppose Mr. Fellowes, who
discovered it afterwards suppose, I say, Sir John Fellowes, Knt.,
can't do it (and I defy any man of imagination to get an impression
from his book) can you, vain man, hope to try ? The effect of the
artist, as I take it, ought to be, to produce upon his hearer's mind,
by his art, an effect something similar to that produced on his own
by the sight of the natural object. Only music, or the best poetry,
can do this. Keats's Ode to the Grecian Urn is the best description
I know of that sweet, old, silent ruin of Telmessus. After you have
once seen it, the remembrance remains with you, like a tune from
Mozart, which he seems to have caught out of heaven, and which
rings sweet harmony in your ears for ever after ! It's a benefit for
all after life ! You have but to shut your eyes, and think, and recall
it, and the delightful vision comes smiling back to your order ! the
divine air the delicious little pageant, which nature set before you
on this lucky day.

Here is the entry made in the note-book on the eventful day :
" In the morning steamed into the bay of Glaucus landed at Makri
cheerful old desolate village theatre by the beautiful seashore
great fertility, oleanders a palm-tree in the midst of the village,
spreading out like a Sultan's aigrette sculptured caverns, or tombs,
up the mountain camels over the bridge.'

Perhaps it is best for a man of fancy to make his own landscape
out of these materials : to group the couched camels under the
plane-trees ; the little crowd of wandering, ragged heathens come
down to the calm water, to behold the nearing steamer ; to fancy a
mountain, in the sides of which some scores of tombs are rudely
carved ; pillars and porticoes, and Doric entablatures. But it is of
the little theatre that he must make the most beautiful picture, a
charming little place of festival, lying out on the shore, and looking
over the sweet bay and the swelling purple islands. No theatre-
goer ever looked out on a fairer scene. It encourages poetry, idle-
ness, delicious sensual reverie. O Jones ! friend of my heart ! would
you not like to be a white-robed Greek, lolling languidly on the cool

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 385

benches here, and pouring compliments in the Ionic dialect into the
rosy ears of Neaera ? Instead of Jones, your name should be lonides ;
instead of a silk hat, you should wear a chaplet of roses in your hair :
you would not listen to the choruses they were singing on the stage,
for the voice of the fair one would be whispering a rendezvous for
the mesonuktiais horais, and my lonides would have no ear for aught
beside. Yonder, in the mountain, they would carve a Doric cave
temple, to receive your urn when all was done ; and you would be
accompanied thither by a dirge of the surviving lonidas. The caves
of the dead are empty now, however, and their place knows them
not any more among the festal haunts of the living.

Of the triumph of unobtrusive accompaniment that
follows, little need be said. The effect of the central
italicised molossus (not three monosyllables, which would
be too rhetorical) is wonderful ; and if, as I think, we
should allow a sort of slur in " post[ure]-making," it is
only like some interesting things in verse. 1

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and
solemn gaieties in which Mr. Joseph Sedley's family indulged was
interrupted by an event which happens in most houses. As you
ascend the staircase of your house from the drawing- towards the
bedroom floors, you may have remarked a little arch in the wall
right before you which at once gives light to the stair which leads
from the second story to the third, where the nursery and servants'
chambers commonly are, and serves for another purpose of utility, of
which the undertaker's men can give you a notion. They rest the
coffins upon that arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb
in any unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the black
arch.

That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up and down
the well of the staircase, and commanding the main thoroughfare by
which the inhabitants are passing ; by which the cook lurks down
before daylight to scour her pots and pans in the kitchen ; by which
the young master stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall,

and the ball ; or master Tommy slides, preferring the banisters for
a mode of conveyance, and disdaining danger and the stair ; down

1 V. Hist. Pros. iii. 136. As is the four-syllable foot with slur in verse
where the trisyllable is the usual limit, so is the six-syllable with slur in prose
where the dochmiac takes the same regular place.

2 C

386 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

which the mother is fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's
arms, as he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced that the
charming patient may go down-stairs ; up which John lurks to bed,
yawning with a sputtering tallow candle, and to gather up before
sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the passages ; that
stair, up or down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the christen-
ing, the doctor to the sick-room, and the undertaker's men to the
upper floor ; what a memento of life, death, and vanity it is that
arch and stair if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing,
looking up and down the well ! The doctor will come up to us for

shouting, | and the post[ure]-making. | If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt cherubim, and
mottoes stating that there is " Quiet in Heaven." Your son will new
furnish the house, or perhaps let it, and go into a more modern
quarter ; your name will be among the " Members Deceased," in the
lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be mourned,
your widow will like to have her weeds neatly made ; the cook will
send, or come up, to ask about dinner ; the survivors will soon bear
to look at your picture over the mantelpiece, which will presently be
deposed from the place of honour, to make way for the portrait of
the son who reigns.

In place of the impossible luxuriance of example above
referred to, let two or three specimens from a single novel,
Vanity Fair, not laboriously searched for, but noted in the
course of a casual re-reading, which was not undertaken
with a view to this book at all, and in which the reader
never thought of making any notes till it" suddenly
occurred to him to do so. The first has perhaps no
special beauty that the ordinary reader should desire it :

Recollections of the best ordained banquets will scarcely cheer
sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most becoming dresses and
brilliant ball triumphs will go a very little way to console faded

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 387

beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a certain period of existence, are
not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant divisions ;
and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small
account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view about
which we all of us must some day or other be speculating.

This is an example (subtly " Titmarshized," of course)
of standard style ; and the most obvious rhythmical device
in it is a familiar one, of which we have seen many
examples, and which has been called telescoping or
lengthening out of parallel periods. But note how care-
fully at least how successfully this is done ! how the
elongation .comes naturally for the sense, as well as
happily for the sound. The closing words in the three
last members (" beauties," " divisions," speculating ")
lengthen in unison with the groups, and here, as not in
most other and almost all earlier cases, the full syllabic
values of the groups behind these closes come in. 1

Here is a magnificent, if short, passage from the part
of the book which some (though I confess I do not) put
highest as a minor whole :

light By way of helping on the preparations for the departure, and
showing that she too could be useful at a moment so critical, this
poor soul had taken up a sash of George's from the drawers whereon
it lay and followed him to and fro, with the sash in her hand, looking

on mutely as the packing proceeded. She came out \ and stood \
leaning \ at the wall, \ holding this sash \ against \ her bosom, \ from
which | the heavy \ net \ of crimson \ dropped \ like a large \ stain \
of blood.

Ah ! how often during the last thirty or forty years
nay, if I may dare to say, even during the last ten, when,
as it has been finely observed, " the men who carry on
their shoulders the literature of the twentieth century

1 There are some, of course, to whom the parenthetic ' ' albeit uncertain "
will seem offensive. Nicht mir.

388 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

know the magic of literature, the power to take a reader
out of himself and bring him nearer to the heart of the
world " how often have I seen these Atlantean psycha-
gogues, consciously or unconsciously, trying to follow and
beat those last few words in sound and picture trying
and, well, not quite succeeding. The most trivial
sentences in Thackeray show this magic, as it seems to
me, though not perhaps to the writer just quoted.

Take another and shorter not, I hope, impudently
short :

Anybody can do that? The Atlantes of the
twentieth century could do it, in a posture vernacularly
well known, but for the peril of disturbing the literature
which they carry ? Perhaps ; but please find some-
thing like it for me before 1845, an d out f Thackeray,
if you will kindly do so. In him it is everywhere.

Newman. Let us conclude the examples of this chapter with a
passage from one of the greatest masters of quietly
exquisite prose that the world has ever seen. To my ear
there is also a curious community of note with the
passage above cited from Thackeray on the Ionian ruins :

x MISCELLANEOUS PROSE, 1820-1860 389

Not one single collocation of words which, without absurd
straining of the natural reading, can be got into a blank
verse ; no spilth of epithets ; not one of the common
rhetorical devices to " get rhythm " : yet, as will be seen
from the scansion, an unbroken, unslurred l current of
harmony right through the piece, a harmony to which
every syllable supplies its quota.

In this quiet but wonderful piece, the method 2 of
which we may later find extended in a still more famous
example of Newman's great pupil and, in turn, deserter,
Froude, the possibilities of standard style, slightly but
marvellously " super-rhythmed," are seen almost at their
perfection. Froude, as we shall see, went further in the
direction of rhythmical ornament and elaboration ; indeed,
he may be said to have overstepped the strictly classical
character of the " standard " itself. But on this, and on
other wider considerations to be deduced from the other
constituents of this chapter, it should be sufficient to

1 The occasional valuations of " -ion," etc., as monosyllabic do not, of
course, in modern English constitute a real slur.

2 Pusey was, of course, as a writer, much inferior to Newman, but I have
wondered whether the younger man did not take something of his written
style from the delivery of that (slightly) elder, who was to him always 6 /j.tyas.
It had a crystalline purity of tone, and a faintly tremulous calmness of rhythm,
which, as I never "sat under" Newman himself, has always made me hear
the sentences of the fugitive Cardinal in the voice of the steadfast Canon.

390 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CH. x

generalise in the Conclusion. We must now, if we may,
pass, in a chapter which can hardly be a short one, but
which must be kept down as far as possible, to the great
exponents, no longer living, of " numerous " and other
prose in the last sixty years of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER XI

RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY PROSE

1843 Modern Painters Influences on Ruskin's style His sub-
jects His practice in verse, and its marks on his prose
Kingsley : his pure Ruskinian prose His " song-shape " style
Charlotte Bronte " George Eliot " Mr. Froude Matthew
Arnold His peculiar system of repetition Examples, and
discussion of it Mansel A false answer corrected Pater
His quietism His apes: Mr. Frederick Myers Mr. Swinburne
The mixed influences in him Examples in great and little
William Morris " Wardour Street" or not? George
Meredith : his Meredithesity Stevenson.

APPRECIATIONS of the merit, as prose, of Mr. Ruskin's 1843

Modern
Painters.

prose-writing have differed, and, I doubt not, still do Modern

differ, though perhaps less than was once the case. But
I can hardly imagine any critic denying that the appear-
ance of the work of this " Graduate of Oxford " made
1843 an epoch for ever in the history of English prose
style. By that year Landor and De Quincey had long
written, and in it they were still writing copiously in the
more elaborate manners ; while for a less period, with
more violent opposition at first, but with much greater
influence, Carlyle had been revolutionising the medium in
ways partly akin, partly diverse. But most of the older
masters of the standard style were dead Southey died
in this very year or touching the close of their career ;
there was a great deal of slovenly writing about ; and
though men older than Ruskin such as the younger of
those treated in the last chapter were to write for twenty,
thirty, forty, or even fifty, years longer, Ruskin, young as
he was, was ahead of his own generation, such as

392 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Matthew Arnold, Froude, Kingsley, while Mr. George
Meredith was a boy of fifteen. Whether he shows any
influence from the older prose harmonists who had begun
to write, as it were, like fairy parents over his cradle, I
must leave to some industrious person to expiscate or rum-
mage out ; for the haystack of Ruskinian autobiography
is not only mighty in bulk but scattered rather forbiddingly.
I should think that, with him, the main guidance was
partly that of the Time-Spirit itself, partly the result of
two special additions thereto in the individual case.
influences on We have seen how the determination away from
H\S subjects & generalities in description was the most powerful aid to
the development of the fuller harmony of prose the
writer's anxiety to be particular necessitating, by con-
scious or unconscious implication, attention to each word,
each syllable, and specially negativing the drab and Slab
indistinctness of the Middletonian buckram, and the
comelier, but still too uniform, broadcloth of the
" standard." But what even De Quincey, even Landor,
had been to the describers of the eighteenth century,
that and more also Mr. Ruskin set himself to be to them.
The Savernake forest, with its foreground of Fannies and
roses, the noble, almost Turneresque, landscape of Baiae
and Posilippo, are but sketches to the marvellous panorama
as of a Perseus flight from the Mediterranean to the
Arctic, or to the companion pictures of the square of St.
Mark and that cathedral close which is a sort of dream-
mixture of Canterbury and York, of Peterborough and
Salisbury, and a score of other minsters and minster-
precincts, from Durham to Exeter, and from Lincoln to
St. David's. Scenery and architecture, pictures and
living creatures, 1 crowded about that extraordinary brain
and hand, clamouring for reproduction in words and
getting it. Certainly, if, as some have it, it is enough to
be very full of your subject, there is no wonder that
Ruskin was polyphonic in style. Certainly, if, as others
hold, the style is the man before any subjects strike him,

1 The two Zoas as one might call them by a joint reminiscence of
Aristotle and Blake.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 393

he could be at no loss in showing that style for any
want of subjects afterwards.

There was, however, I think, another influence, more His practice in
doubtfully salutary, but pretty certainly operative. As verse>
one takes down from the shelf not, indeed, for the
first, but, it is to be feared, not for much more than the
second time a pair of mighty quartos, decently clad in
white vellum and green linen, sumptuously printed, with
lovely uncut margins, and cunningly embellished by not
a few most desirable drawings, one comforting suggestion
compensates the deplorable acknowledgment that here is
really as in another case there was once so falsely
asserted to be " very valueless verse." That suggestion
is that perhaps, or rather all but certainly, if Ruskin had
been a better poet he would have been a very inferior,
and beyond all question a much less prolific, prose-
writer. Now (thank Heaven ! once more, as in the case
of De Quincey), we have no lack of good poets, and
though this book does not exactly show a lack of good
prose -writers, we had a little more room for reinforce-
ment there. At any rate, it is excessively unlikely that
any possible poetic Ruskin could have been, in his vocation,
as good as the prose Ruskin we have got. So let us, for
once, be Panglossian.

It is, further, the most natural thing in the world that and its marks
this Drang nach Versen, when it found itself baffled and or
beaten off from actual verse, should have left unusual
formal traces on the prose in which it happily consoled
and lost itself. De Quincey, as has been said, evidently
had, despite his tell-tale boast of what he could have been
an he would, no real turn for actual poetry. Men as
different as Southey, Coleridge, Landor, Shelley, Moore,
could, with differing but real effect, use either harmony
as they pleased. Ruskin had the poetic velleity with not
a little of the poetic thought he is one of the chief
refutations of Wordsworth's astounding petitio principii
and he had something, too, of the mechanical accomplish-
ment, though nothing higher, of poetic form. Accordingly,
you will find in him more actual metre, and especially

394 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

more actual blank verse, even allowing proportion for his
immense volume, than in any great prose writer known
to me. The fact is, of course, notorious (we shall see
abundant evidence of it even in the few short specimens
that we can afford), but it must be clear that we are not
entitled to neglect it, or to dismiss it with very brief
discussion, because it happens to be one of the few well-
known facts in a mostly pioneer enquiry. Nor is such
discussion obviated it is, in fact, made all the more
desirable by the fact that Ruskin's Setvorys his
astonishing blend of ingenuity and vigour actually
carries off, not merely occasional blank heroics, but whole
batches, and almost paragraphs of them, unnoticed or
half noticed, in the gorgeous flood of colour and the
infinite symphony of sound.

So ineluctable indeed was this tendency towards mejre
in Ruskin, that there are in him (and this has been much
less noticed than the blank verse) very frequent stanza-
arrangements such as may be found in avowed hybrids like
the styles of Ossian and of Blake's " Prophecies," but
hardly elsewhere, except by mere accident, till Ruskin
himself set the example. Every now and then, in these
formed or half-formed stanzas, there is actual rhyme, as in
a description of Rouen :

And the city lay

Under its guarding hills
One labyrinth of flight,

Its grey and fretted towers
Misty in their magnificence of height ;

where a very thinkable equivalent J for " their magnificence
of" will bring the thing metrically off.

Here is another, unrhymed, and saved in the first line
(not the last) by a sort of insertion which can easily be
^inserted :

1 Such as

" Misty in topless height."

Of course the actual phrase is an instance of the escamotage, the clever
" conveyance," which passes off the metrical card as possibly prose-rhythmical.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 395

And the [far-reaching] ridges [of pastoral mountain] succeed
each other 1

Like the long and sighing swell
Which moves over quiet waters,
From some far-off stormy sea.

The brain of his style seems to have been full of
these verse-matrices ; and inasmuch they are far more
difficult subjects, for smuggling on and off, than a blank
verse, it is simply astounding to see how the lava of his
volcanic expression digests and assimilates the casts from
them.

Of the blank verses by themselves it is unnecessary to
extract special examples : you can hardly open a page of
Ruskin when his prose has caught fire without finding
them ; and they can be abundantly indicated, as they
occur, in the specimens which we shall give with a more
general intent. And these, both for the special object
and the general, cannot be better headed than by the
famous and magnificent picture of the front of St. Mark's,
above referred to :

And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered
arches there rises a vision | out of the earth, and all the great square
seems | to have opened from it in a kind of awe, | that we may see
it far away ; a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into |
a long low pyramid of coloured light ; | a treasure-heap, it seems,
partly of gold, | and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed
beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and
beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber, and delicate as
ivory, | sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm | leaves and lilies,
and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering
among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of
buds and plumes ; | and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms | of
angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other |
across the gates, their figures indistinct | among the gleaming of the
golden ground | through the leaves beside them, interrupted and
dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of
Eden, when first | its gates were angel -guarded long ago. | And
round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated

1 Here it may be noticed that the first prose member supplies two verse-
lines of the required character :

"And the ridges of pastoral mountain,"
or

"And the ridges succeed each other."

396 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

stones, jasper | and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine | spotted
with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to
the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, " their bluest veins to kiss " | the
shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing | line after line of
azure undulation, | as a receding tide leaves the waved sand ; | their
capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and
drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning
and ending in the Cross ; and above them, in the broad archivolts,
a continuous chain of language and of life angels, and the signs
of heaven and the labours of men, each in its appointed season upon
the earth ; and above these | another range of glittering pinnacles, |
mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, | a confusion
of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are | seen
blazing in their breadth of golden strength, | and the St. Mark's
Lion, lifted | on a blue field covered with stars, until | at last, as if
in ecstacy, the crests | of the arches break into a marble foam, | and
toss themselves far into the blue sky | in flashes and wreaths of
sculptured spray, as if | the breakers on the Lido shore had been |
frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs | had inlaid them
with coral and amethyst. 1 j

Now, of course, it obviously may be said, and probably
has been said a hundred times, that this is illegitimate, a
" monstrous beauty," something that " you ought not to
like." Well ! this is the seventh vial-volume (I blush
for it) that I have opened in hope of pouring contempt and
destruction on the doctrine of monstrous beauties. It is
impossible that beauty should be monstrous ; and if I
met a monster that pretended to be one and was beauti-
ful, I should, like Prince Seithenyn, tell it to its beautiful
face that it was no monster. But is this beautiful ?
There of course we come to the old flaming walls of the
world of taste. I can only say that if it is not, I do not
know where beauty of prose is to be found.

But there is something more than this to be said
something more than mere personal preference to be
alleged, with or without the chance of finding oneself not
alone in it. After all, the dicta 2 of some pretty sane
and moderate authorities of the most classical character
of Dionysius and of Quintilian can be pleaded in

1 Eight almost impeccable "blanks" following each other; ten with the
brachycatalectic " and the St. Mark's " only interposed as a Shakespearian
fragment ; and thirteen with the not very alien intrusion of " a confusion . . .
horses are."

2 V. sup. title-page and pp. 1-8.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 397

favour of this merging and meeting of all sorts of metrical
music in the flood of rhythmical prose. And the other
methods by which the effect is attained are strict develop-
ments of those of masters so different and yet so authori-
tative as, for instance, Hooker and Gibbon. Vast as are
the sentence -paragraphs, long as is the central sweep
which the momentum of their manner enables them to
sustain, the principle of the flight, for all their flutter and
flash of gorgeous plumage, is not so very unlike the rise
and poise and sinking of the Ecclesiastical Polity ; while
the minor undulations of the composing clauses, for all
the splash and spray, " send on " the reader in a fashion
not so fundamentally different from the smoother and
sedater sweep of the Decline and Fall.

Here, too, one obvious feature of Ruskin's style the
way in which the enormous sentences are built up, tier on
tier, by clauses so admirably and distinctly cumulative
that no confusion whatever results may seem to belong
to other departments than ours. But, in reality, this
feature has almost infinite connection with, and influence
upon, the pure rhythm of the composition. And, in
particular, it helps, almost more than any other character-
istic, to perform that office of "carrying over" the im-
bedded or rather " inflooded " verse -fragments ; while
these, in their turn, eddy and undulate and foambell it
with their endless variety of form, and colour, and tone.
Not merely does the constant blank verse appear with
the frequency indicated by the straight division-mark, yet
for the most part justifying itself by different rhetorical
partition but it interarches and crosses itself with other
things distinct from it scraps and fragments of other
rhythms, single-lined, coupleted almost stanzaed after
the fashion noted above in the glorious welter

The crests of the arches break

Into a marble foam,
And toss themselves far \aloff\

In flashes ... of sculptured spray

as you may feel inclined to vary it, or complete it, from
the actual material offered you.

398 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

But let us take another passage somewhat shorter
and somewhat quieter and apply to it the old method
of continuous scansion to bring out the prose feet. The
reflective close of the " Jura Pine Forest," the earlier
portion of which has been as florid and as " blank-versy "
as the " St. Mark " itself, will do admirably :

I do not say that you may not screw out some metrical

1 This is one of those strictly speaking six-syllabled feet which are prac-
tically and by delivery dochmiacs. And so is the next. But on my older
principle of not hesitating to split words I should have cut them and I have

no objection to cutting them now into three feet, "the imperish|able or
continually renewed."

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 399

fragment here and there in this ; but they are certainly
few, and as certainly not prominent, while the quieter
flow of the passage would not help to disguise them if
they were.

How tempting it is to multiply longer and shorter
exemplifications from Ruskin need not be said. He will
sometimes give you quite short sentences, not really
metrical at all, somewhat stiff in their brocade of language,
but gorgeous for all that

Far above, in thunder-blue serration, stand the eternal edges of
the angry Apennine, dark with rolling impendence of volcanic cloud.

Here " eternal " to " Apennine " is a constructive
Alexandrine, and " rolling " to " cloud " a heroic. But no
human being with an ear and a tongue that obeys it
would ever dream of reading them as such.

Sometimes very often, of course his rhythms are
mainly Scriptural, as in that fine passage of Modern
Painters which ends :

He has not heaped the rocks of the mountain only for the quarry ;
nor clothed the grass of the field only for the oven.

And yet often again, at one period particularly, the
well-known influence of Carlyle brings about a mixture
of rhythms, very curious and interesting. It is well seen
in the contrast of the birthplaces and breedings of
Giorgione and Turner :

In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave l around their isles
of sacred sand, each with his name written and the cross graved at
his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of a world. Rather itself
a world.

Of things beautiful, besides men and women, dusty sunbeams up
and down the street in summer mornings ; deep-furrowed cabbage
leaves at the green-grocers' ; magnificence of oranges in wheel-
barrows round the corner ; and Thames shore within three minutes'
race.

But indeed it would be somewhat fatuous to pretend

1 The rhythmical effect of dropping articles, so constantly exhibited in
Carlyle himself, is one of the agreeable arcana minora of the subject. I
suppose the brain at once expects and misses them ; and so a little shock,
not disagreeable but distinctly perceptible, is produced.

400 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

to say anything new about Ruskin. We drop here from
our mostly untrodden ways into a well-known diversorium,
and, without having any ascetic Antonian and Arnoldian
objection to such places, we need not play the superfluous
cicerone in them. He could not have been omitted
without something of affectation in the compiler of this
book, and something more of loss to the reader of it.
Nor, except the saturation with metre or metre's worth,
and the unique fashion in which this is carried off, is
there perhaps very much in him that requires close or
elaborate analysis. His immense volume, and its direction
to a whole encyclopaedia of subjects, may have prevented
any intense idiosyncrasy of style, and certainly diverted
his energies into a great many different channels of it.
You may find, besides the Biblical and Carlylian echoes
just noted, numerous passages of almost prae-" standard " ;
attempts, not, as a rule, very happy, at that humorous-
familiar which almost pointedly reduces rhythm to the
minimum ; several other varieties. And in the general
history which I am trying to write, it may be questioned
whether his position is not rather that of a fertile and
delightful producer, and, still more, an influence of almost
incalculable force and range, than that of an extremely
original deviser of new methods. His are no doubt the
methods of Coleridge in the Anima (which he did not
and could not know), of De Quincey and Landor and
Wilson (which he did), with a " much more also " added.
But they are still those methods.

Kingsley -. his Hardly any one was quicker to feel the widely extended
influence of Modern Painters than Charles Kingsley, and
in his very first novel, Yeast, we find this :

Launcelot sat and tried to catch perch, but Tregarva's words
haunted him. He lighted his cigar, and tried to think' earnestly
over the matter, but he had got into the wrong place for thinking.
All his thoughts, all his sympathies, were drowned in the rush and
whirl of the water. He forgot everything else in the mere animal
enjoyment of sight and sound. Like many young men at his crisis
of life, he had given himself up to the mere contemplation of nature
till he had become her slave ; and now a luscious scene, a singing

xi R US KIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 401

bird, were enough to allure his mind away from the most earnest
and awful thoughts. He tried to think, but the river would not let
him. It thundered and spouted out behind him from the hatches,
and leapt madly past him, and caught his eyes in spite of him, and
swept them away down its dancing waves, and then let them go
again only to sweep them down again and again, till his brain felt a
delicious dizziness from the everlasting rush and the everlasting roar.
And then below, how it spread, | and writhed, and whirled into
transparent fans, | hissing and twining snakes, polished glass wreaths, |
huge crystal bells, which boiled up from the bottom, | and dived
again beneath long threads | of creamy foam, and swung round posts
and roots, | and rushed blackening under dark weed-fringed boughs,
and gnawed at the marly banks, | and shook the ever restless bul-
rushes, | till it was swept away and down over the white pebbles |
and olive weeds, in one broad rippling sheet | of molten silver,
towards l the distant sea. | Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore his
thoughts floating on its oily stream ; and the great trout, with their
yellow sides and peacock backs, lunged among the eddies, and the
silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the
May-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with
their green gauzy wings ; the coot clanked musically among the
reeds ; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper monotone ; the king-
fisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue | spark of electric
light ; the swallows' bills | snapped as they twined and hawked
above the pool ; | the swifts' wings whirred like musket balls, as
they | rushed screaming past his head ; and ever the river fleeted
by, bearing his eyes away down the current, till its wild eddies
began | to glow with crimson beneath the setting sun.

Here there is not only the beautiful bane of blank
verse, marked in some half-dozen instances (it has not
been thought necessary to scan the whole passage), but
interesting fragments, as in Ruskin himself, of other verse
measures :

And ev|er the rivjer fleet |ed by ...

And the May- [flies flick |ered and rus|tled . . .

Down | wards it fleet [ed ev|er . . .

But it is all melted and blended into thoroughly sound
prose, and here and there, as in

1 Taking this monosyllabically. But it is really a dissyllable in the place,
as, in fact, it is generally in good writers, and so duly trips up the blank-
verse run, and substitutes a grave prose rhythm.

2 D

402 A HISTOR Y OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

It thundered and spouted [out] behind him,

you see the cunning skid inserted to prevent the whole
revolving in too verse-like a fashion. And I think it is
fair to Kingsley to add that if the reader will look care-
fully at the construction and contrasting of the clause
lengths in the sentence, " And then below . . . distant sea,"
he will see more careful art in the disciple than in some
at least of the master's outpourings.

His "song- In Hypatia, and elsewhere, following his other master,

Carlyle, he too often adopted an excessively broken fashion
of rhythm, produced by mechanical means of rows of
points and so forth, which sometimes become a little
irritating. In The Heroes, in the Water-Babies, and else-
where, examples of prose harmony in the severer and
simpler, as well as in the more exuberant types of splen-
dour, abound. But his natural tendency was rather in
the direction of even further indulgence in quasi-metrical
rhythm. It is well known to students of prosodic effect
that there is hardly a single poet, not of the highest class,
who, in so small a body of poetic work, has shown such
various, such original, and such almost impeccable mastery
of metre as the author of Andromeda. But contrary to
a pretty general rule he did not wholly reserve for verse
his more tunable efforts. The famous passage at the close
of Westward Ho I was quite intentional, and he knew
that it was a doubtful experiment. I -suppose it is ; but
I cannot help thinking that if Mercury and Apollo sat in
banco and " broke " Kingsley for disregarding their bound-
ary laws as officer of either, they would agree to make
him Warden of the joint Marches next moment. The
thing is so curious, as well as so beautiful, that it may be
well to have it displayed in print, both as straightforward
prose and in its rhythmical-metrical stave-order.

Wondering, they set him down upon the heather, while the bees
hummed round them in the sun ; and Amyas felt for a hand of each,
and clasped it in his own hand, and began

"When you left me there upon the rock, lads, I looked away and
out to sea, to get one last snuff of the merry sea breeze, which will
never sail me again. And as I looked, I tell you truth, I could see

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 403

the water and the sky, as plain as ever I saw them, till I thought my
sight was come again. But soon I knew it was not so ; for I saw
more than man could see ; right over the ocean, as I live, and away
to the Spanish Main. And I saw Barbados, and Grenada, and all
the isles that we ever sailed by ; and La Guayra in Carraccas, and
the Silla, and the house beneath it where she lived. And I saw him
walking with her on the barbecu, and he loved her then. I saw
what I saw ; and he loved her ; and I say he loves her still.

" Then I saw the cliffs beneath me, and the Gull rock, and the
Shutter, and the Ledge ; I saw them, William Gary, and the weeds
beneath the merry blue sea. And I saw the grand old galleon,
Will ; she has righted with the sweeping of the tide. She lies in
fifteen fathoms, at the edge of the rocks, upon the sand ; and her
men are all lying around her, asleep until the judgment day."

Gary and Jack looked at him, and then at each other. His eyes
were clear, and bright, and full of meaning ; and yet they knew that
he was blind. His voice was shaping itself into a song. Was he
inspired ? Insane ? What was it ? And they listened with awe-
struck faces, as the giant pointed down into the blue depths far
below, and went on.

"And I saw him sitting in his cabin, like a valiant gentleman of
Spain ; and his officers were sitting round him with their swords
upon the table at the wine. And the prawns and the cray-fish, and
the rockling, they swam in and out above their heads ; but Don
Guzman he never heeded, but sat still, and drank his wine. Then
he took a locket from his bosom, and I heard him speak, Will, and
he said : ' Here's the picture of my fair and true lady ; drink to her,
senors, all.' Then he spoke to me, Will, and called me, right up
through the oar-weed and the sea : ' We have had a fair quarrel,
senor ; it is time to be friends once more. My wife and your brother
have forgiven me ; so your honour takes no stain.' And I answered,
' We are friends, Don Guzman ; God has judged our quarrel, and
not we.' Then he said, ' I sinned, and I am punished.' And I
said, 'And, senor, so am I.' Then he held out his hand to me,
Gary ; and I stooped to take it, and awoke."

And I saw | Barbados, | and Grenada, and all the isles | that we

ever | sailed by ;
and La Guayra | in Carraccas, | and the Silla, j and the house |

beneath it | where she lived.
And I saw him | walking | with her | on the barbecu, ; and he loved

her | then.
I saw | what I saw ; | and he loved her ; ; and I say he | loves her j

still

404 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Then I saw the | cliffs bejneath me, : and the Gull rock, I and the
Shutter, | and the Ledge ;

I saw them, | William, | Gary, : and the weeds | beneath the merry |
blue sea.

And I saw the | grand old | galleon, | Will ; ! she has righted j with
the sweeping | of the tide.

She lies in | fifteen | fathoms, : at the edge of | the rocks, upon the
sand ;

and her men are | all lying | around her, : asleep until | the judg-
ment | day.

And I saw him | sitting | in his cabin i like a valiant J gentleman |

of Spain ;
and his officers | were sitting | round him ; with their swords up [on

the table | at the wine.
And the prawns and | the cray-fish, | and the rockling, ; they swam

wine.
Then he took | a locket | from his bosom, and I heard him | speak,

Will, | and he said :
" Here's the picture | of my fair and | true lady ; \ drink to her, |

senors, | all."
Then he spoke to me, | Will, | and called me, right up | through

once more.
My wife | and your brother | have forgiven me ; : so your honour |

takes no I stain."

xi R US KIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 405

And I answered, | " We are friends, | Don Guzman ; : God has

"And, senor, | so am I."

The thing is, I say, most curious. It is not exactly
like anything that we have seen, though it is perhaps a
development, by a hand of far greater technical skill in
verse, of what we have seen in Mr. Ruskin. It is not
heavily blank-versed prose ; indeed, the prevailing rhythm
is trisyllabic or rather quadrisyllabic. 1 It is not in the
least like the long and comparatively equilibrated lines of
Blake's " Prophetic " books. There is no artificial stave
division as there is in Ossian, and (though of a very
different kind) in Leaves of Grass. It is, as its author
with perfect appositeness describes it, " prose shaped into
song," but with constant, and it would seem deliberate,
attention to the insertion, from short time to time, of
words that slightly break the regularity of the rhythm,
and remind you that, after all, it is not meant to be metre.
In its avoidance of too definitely poetic diction, in its
colloquial forms, and in this carefully adjusted " knapping "
of the rhythm, it seems to me, though undoubtedly a
dangerous, a successfully-brought-off experiment, and one
well suited for the purposes of romance occasionally.
But, as the late Professor Bain said of kissing in a phrase
which I may have quoted before (it is so delectable), " the
occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare."

I made some remarks in the last chapter on the
difficulty of " sampling " the general rhythm of novelists ;

1 It is not, I hope, necessary to explain at any length my principle of
arrangement. It is that of lengthened staves with a strong Sigurd centre
pause (marked ; ) in fact, some of them are not unlike Sigurd lines, a quarter
of a century before date. In some cases, of course, these will easily adjust
themselves to ballad subdivision with generous anapaestic substitution :
' ' But Don Guzman he never heeded,
But sat still and drank his wine."

Generally, however, the all-powerful and all-pervading Ionic a minors, or
third paeon, is the key-note ; and its continuance, beyond strict prose perfec-
tion, is the mother of the measure.

406 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

and this necessarily proves harder as we get into the ever-
thickening press of those of the middle and later nine-
teenth century. Charlotte Bronte, both for her own
merits and for some estimates that have been held of her,
must have discussion and exemplification as a pendant to
Kingsley. Then, perhaps, one from each " George," to
give the sexes no advantage over each other, may suffice,
but, for reasons, the real George Mr. Meredith had
better be postponed.

charlotte With respect to the Brontes, one of the most
Bronte, competent critics I know, my friend Professor Vaughan,
while admitting that Emily's " prose lyrics " are rather
diffused than concentrated, claims for Charlotte, in the
closing passage of Villette, an " arrangement of words
supremely beautiful," and such as he would rather have
written than any but a very few passages in English ;
while he ranks with it Louis Moore's vision of the moon
in Shirley. For my part I should put the three
descriptions of the pictures in Jane Eyre (chap, xiii.)
above both of these as mere " beautiful arrangements of
words." * But (playing the ungrateful but necessary
part of Devil's Advocate) I should suggest that there is,
even in this last, something like a very definite evidence
of " pattern " from De Quincey in the Suspiria. While
as for Professor Vaughan's favourite, nothing can exceed
its pathos or its appropriateness in substance : but in style,
and especially in rhythm, I should say that it approaches
too near to the bastard poetic it is of our Second, not
our Third class (v. sup. p. 342). The truth, I think, is
that here, as elsewhere, that peculiar and rather specially
feminine crudity which accompanied all Charlotte's un-
questioned power and passion, as a sort of impotentia in
the true Latin sense, prevented, and would always have
prevented her, from achieving full mistress-ship in this

1 These are preceded by a shorter piece of the same kind (towards the
end of chap, xii.), which is, perhaps, even finer, but rather more blank -
versified ; and throughout Villette there is much of the same kind of "fine
writing," as Matthew Arnold calls it. in his severe, but not quite unjust,
remarks on the book.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 407

direction. In the next generation a third- or fourth-rate
writer of the same sex, whose name it is unnecessary to
mention, pleaded (or rather prided herself upon the
notion) that " the burden of meaning lay too heavy on
a woman's soul " to let her command elaborately formal
metres. It is possible to apply this, quite differently, so
that it may be not pretentious nonsense, but only a
milder form of that " malediction of Eve " which even
the " benediction of Mary " has not fully removed in
any case known to me except in that of Miss Christina
Rossetti the removal being perhaps a fee to the model
of a certain " Girlhood " picture. It will, however, only
be fair to give Professor Vaughan's preferred piece
and mine :

The sun passes the equinox ; the days shorten ; the leaves grow
sere ; but he is coming.

Frosts appear at night. November has sent his fogs in advance ;
the wind takes its autumn moan ; but he is coming.

The skies hang full and dark ; a rack sails from the west ; the
clouds cast themselves into strange forms arches and broad
radiations ; there rise resplendent mornings glorious, royal, purple
as monarch in his state ; the heavens are one flame ; so wild are
they, they rival battle at its thickest so bloody, they shame victory
in her pride. I know some signs of the sky, I have noted them
ever since childhood. God watch that sail ! Oh, guard it !

The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee " keening "
at every window ! It will rise it will swell it shrieks out long :
wander as I may through the house this night, I cannot lull the
blast. The advancing hours make it strong ; by midnight all
sleepless watchers hear and fear a wild south-west storm.

That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease
till the Atlantic was strewed with wrecks ; it did not lull till the
deeps had gorged their full of sustenance. Not till the destroying
angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work would he fold the
wings whose waft was thunder the tremor of whose plumes was
storm.

Peace, be still ! Oh, a thousand weepers praying in agony on
waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered not
uttered till, when the hush came, some could not feel it : till when
the sun returned his light was night to some.

Now for the other ; only adding to the observations
on both made above, that in the piece just quoted there is
a notable, and doubtless not unintended, lack of continuous

408 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

rhythm ; it consists chiefly of short and mostly iambic
and trochaic fragments, which look like crumbled blank
verse. The large flowing movements of the greater
prose are absent from it. In what comes next there
is a nearer approach to them :

These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented
clouds, low, livid, rolling over a swollen sea. All the distance was
in eclipse, so, too, was the foreground, or rather, the nearest billows,
for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a
half-submerged mast, on which sat a -cormorant, dark and large,
with wings flecked with foam ; its beak held a gold bracelet, set
with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette
could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart.
Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse glanced through
the green water : a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible,
whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.

The second picture contained, for foreground, only the dim peak
of a hill with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze.
Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at
twilight. Rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust,
portrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The
dim forehead was crowned with a star ; the lineaments below were
seen as through the suffusion of vapour ; the eyes shone dark and
wild ; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by
storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection like
moonlight ; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds
from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.

The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar
winter sky ; a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances,
close serried along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose,
in the foreground, a head a colossal head, inclined towards the
iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the
forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a
sable veil ; a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye
hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair,
alone were visible. Above the temples amidst wreathed turban
folds of black drapery, vague in its character and consistency as
cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a
more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was " the likeness of a Kingly
Crown" ; what it diademed was "the shape which shape had none."

"George " George Eliot's " later quasi - scientific jargon was
lot ' not so arrhythmic as it was in other ways inartistic ;
but it hardly needs exemplification here. One well-
known and justly favourite passage of the earlier and

better time will show a more than ordinary deftness of
intensified rhythm-doses, here and there, in otherwise
ordinary style :

the cold j starlight. At first there was a little peevish cry of
" mammy," and an effort to regain the pillowing arm and bosom ;
but mammy's ear was deaf, and the pillow seemed to be slipping
away backward. Suddenly, as the child rolled downward on its
mother's knees, all wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright
glancing light on the white ground, and with the ready transition of
infancy, it was immediately absorbed in watching the bright living
thing running towards it, yet never arriving. That bright living
thing must be caught ; and in an instant the child had slipped on
all fours, and held out one little hand to catch the gleam. But the
gleam would not be caught in that way, and now the head was held
up to see where the cunning gleam came from. It came from a
very bright place ; and the little one rising on its legs, toddled
through the snow, the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped
trailing behind it, and the queer little bonnet dangling at its back
toddled on to the open door of Silas Marner's cottage, and right up
to the warm hearth, where there was a bright fire of logs and sticks,
which had thoroughly warmed the old sack (Silas's greatcoat) spread
out on the bricks to dry. The little one, accustomed to be left to
itself for long hours without notice from its mother, squatted down
on the sack, and spread its tiny hands towards the blaze, in perfect
contentment, gurgling and making many inarticulate communications
to the cheerful fire, like a new-hatched gosling beginning to find

It was, as most people know, the fate of Mr. Froude Mr. Froude.
to attract whether in all or in any cases by his own
fault matters nothing here opprobrium from the most
opposite quarters. Even where one would think him
least assailable, from the side of style, there have not been
wanting assailants. " Slipshod," " journalese," and so
forth, are words I have heard uttered, and seen written, to

410 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

his address ; and that, too, from persons who neither
revenged The Nemesis of Faith, nor formed part of the
chorus of Furies of which Mr. Freeman was coryphee,
nor partook of the probably mistaken but not unrespect-
able resentment aroused by his management of the
Carlyle documents. I do not think the reproaches were
ever just ; though the singular carelessness which he
always exhibited as to fact a carelessness often shown
to the positive damage of his own case, and therefore
evidently not dishonest as to others may sometimes
have extended to his writing. Certainly, by far the
greater part of that writing, from the exquisite crispness
of the Cats Pilgrimage to the more formal rhetoric of the
History, and almost all the rest, is that of a great master
of style. And one famous passage which has justly
become part of the " ordinary " of the prose antholdgist,
but which is all the more suitable for us attains a beauty
scarcely inferior to that of anything given within the
covers of this book, perhaps not to that of anything to be
found outside of them :

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 411

so | laboriously | built for themselves, j mankind | were to remain |
no longer.

This exquisite passage is evidently to some extent a
hybrid between the " standard " and the new " Corinthian "
style ; nay, we can go nearer to the fact, and say that it
is in a way, though not in the least a copy of either, a
hybrid between Newman and Ruskin. It has, as we
observed above, something of the clear, cool, silvery note
of the former, variegated and flourished up, but still
recognisable. It has, if not borrowed, paralleled not a
few of its fioriture from or with the other ; and in particular
we may note not merely one but two consecutive drops
into blank verse

Had risen up beyond the western sea . . .

The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk

though, as in Ruskin himself, the too obtrusive effect is
cleverly " passed " or masked. But another note, far
older than either Newman or Ruskin, is present that
ubiquity, or at any rate frequency, of the Ionic a minore
or third paeon (they are usually very difficult to distinguish
in our tongue) which has such melodious influence, and
which seems to acquire special effect from being followed
or preceded by certain other feet.

412 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Matthew The most distinguished writer who, in age, in

Arnold. University membership, in influence on " mid-Victorian "
times, and in other ways yet, forms a sort of triad with
Ruskin and Froude I have to the knowing named
Matthew Arnold occupies, from our point of view, a
rather singular position. It is well known from external
testimony, and could have been easily discovered from
internal evidence, that Mr. Arnold took a great deal of
trouble with his prose indeed relatively, if not positively
also, more than with his verse. You never find in the
Essays the irritating and sometimes almost incredible
slips of carelessness or bluntness of taste that frequently
mar the Poems, and a positively ill-sounding clause is very
much harder to find than such strange combinations of
cacophony and absurdity in line as, for instance
Have felt their huge frames not constructed right.
For this reason or that, however and it would not be
difficult to suggest more than one or two, he hardly
ever so much as attempted symphony or polyphony in
prose even the famous and never - to - be - forgotten
epiphonema to Oxford has probably less of either than
any other writer of his rank would have given to it.
And as a general rule he abstains altogether from the
smallest touch of distinctly " numerous " prose. His earlier
manner, 1 indeed, is merely of the best of that variation of
the " standard " which may almost be said to be peculiar
to Oxford, and which we find in Oxonian contemporaries
so different as Newman and Mansel.

His peculiar But later, while assuming, at any rate very often,
repetition a t ne f conversational lightness, he affected, almost
always, a system of selection of word and phrase which,
one may almost say, was intended to do duty for rhythm
proper. It threw back, in some degree, to that peculiarity
of the oratorical style of the eighteenth century which
we noticed, and which consisted in arranging runs of
comparatively unaccented syllable-batches, relieved from
insignificance by the presence of strongly stressed conclu-

1 No better example of it, or of its kind generally, can be found than the
well-known Preface to the Poems of 1853.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 413

sions in clause and sentence. But it took considerable
liberties with this principle, and indulged in what, I fear,
the eighteenth century itself would have unhesitatingly,
and in a certain sense irrefutably, stigmatised as flat
tautology. Of its object we need not talk much : it was
intended, no doubt, to attract, and, till it teases too much,
it is undoubtedly successful in attracting, attention to the
theme. But it must be quite evident that the writer
either thinks nothing of mere pleasantness of sound, or
(in places at least) deliberately disregards it in order to
attain this object. He makes, once more, a sort of return
to balance as his one machine of rhythmical appeal ; but
it is a balance not merely double as usually, or treble as in
Johnson and others, but polycentred, the repeated words
being the pivots. 1

Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral sphere, but Examples,
also in the intellectual and spiritual sphere, energy and honesty are
most important and fruitful qualities ; that, for instance, of what we
call genius energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning to a
nation energy and honesty as its chief spiritual characteristics, by
refusing to it, as at all eminent characteristics, openness of mind and
flexibility of intelligence, we do not by any means, as some people
might at first suppose, relegate its importance and its power of
manifesting itself with effect from the intellectual to the moral sphere.
We only indicate its probable special line of successful activity in
the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain imperfections and failings
to which, in this sphere, it will always be subject. Genius is mainly
an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius there-
fore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well be
eminent in poetry ; and we have Shakespeare. Again, the highest
reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of
divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry ; therefore,
a nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well be eminent
in science ; and we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton : in
the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what
that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands
and insists upon, is freedom ; entire independence of all authority,
prescription, and routine the fullest room to expand as it will.
Therefore, a nation whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy will

1 It has also, of course, no slight relation to the system specially remark-
able in Dryden, of dotting the same word at different places of succeeding
verses (v. Hist. Pros. ii. 364). But, for obvious reasons, it has quite a
different effect.

414 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

not be very apt to set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed standard,
an authority, like an academy. . . . The form, the method of
evolution, the precision, the proportion, the relation of the parts to
the whole, in an intellectual work, depend mainly upon them.
And these are the elements of an intellectual work which are
really most communicable from it, which can most be learned and
adopted from it, which have, therefore, the greatest effect upon
the intellectual performance of others. Even in poetry these
requisites are very important ; and the poetry of a nation, not
eminent for the gifts on which they depend, will more or less suffer
by this shortcoming. In poetry, however, they are, after all,
secondary, and energy is the first thing ; but in prose they are of
first-rate importance. In its prose literature, therefore, and in the
routine of intellectual work generally, a nation with no particular
gifts for these will not be so successful. These are what, as I have
said, can to a certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the
free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate and maintain
them, and, therefore, a nation with an eminent turn for them
naturally establishes academies. So far as routine and authority
tend to embarrass energy and inventive genius, academies may be
said to be obstructive to energy and inventive genius, and, to this
extent, to the human spirit's general advance. But then this evil is
so much compensated by the propagation, on a large scale, of the
mental aptitudes and demands which an open mind and a flexible
intelligence naturally engender, genius itself, in the long run, so
greatly finds its account in this propagation, and bodies like the
French Academy have such power for promoting it, that the general
advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole, rather furthered
than impeded by their existence.

If I were asked where English poetry got these three things, its
turn for style, its turn for melancholy, and its turn for natural magic,
for catching and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully
near and vivid way, I should answer with some doubt, that it got
much of its turn for style from a Celtic source ; with less doubt,
that it got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source ; with no
doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all its natural
magic.

Any German with penetration and tact in matters of literary
criticism will own that the principal deficiency of German poetry is
in style ; that for style, in the highest sense, it shows but little
feeling. Take the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give
the idea of what the peculiar power which lies in style is, Pindar,
Virgil, Dante, Milton. An example of the peculiar effect which
these poets produce, you can hardly give from German poetry.
Examples enough you can give from German poetry of the effect
produced by genius, thought, and feeling expressing themselves in
clear language, simple language, passionate language, eloquent

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 415

language, with harmony and melody ; but not of the peculiar effect
exercised by eminent power of style. Every reader of Dante can at
once call to mind what the peculiar effect I mean is ; I spoke of it
in my lectures on translating Homer, and there I took an example
of it from Dante, who perhaps manifests it more eminently than any
other poet. But from Milton, too, one may take examples of it
abundantly ; compare this from Milton

. . . Nor sometimes forget
Those other two, equal with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Masonides ;

with this from Goethe

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.

Nothing can be better in its way than the style in which Goethe
there presents his thought, but it is the style of prose as much as of
poetry ; it is lucid, harmonious, earnest, eloquent, but it has not
received that peculiar kneading, heightening, and recasting which is
observable in the style of the passage from Milton, a style which
seems to have for its cause a certain pressure of emotion, and an
ever-surging, yet bridled excitement in the poet, giving a special
intensity to his way of delivering himself. In poetical races and
epochs this turn for style is peculiarly observable ; and perhaps it is
only on condition of having this somewhat heightened and difficult
manner, so different from the plain manner of prose, that poetry gets
the privilege of being loosed, at its best moments, into that perfectly
simple, limpid style, which is the supreme style of all, but the
simplicity of which is still not the simplicity of prose. The
simplicity of Menander's style is the simplicity of prose, and is the
same kind of simplicity as that which Goethe's style, in the passage
I have quoted, exhibits ; but Menander does not belong to a great
poetical moment, he comes too late for it ; it is the simple passages
in poets like Pindar or Dante which are perfect, being masterpieces
of poetical simplicity. One may say the same of the simple passages
in Shakespeare; they are perfect, 'their simplicity being a poetical
simplicity. They are the golden, easeful, crowning moments of a
manner which is always pitched in another key from that of prose,
a manner changed and heightened ; the Elizabethan style, regnant
in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, is mainly the continua-
tion of this manner of Shakespeare's. It was a manner much more
turbid and strown with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, Dante,
or Milton ; often it was detestable ; but it owed its existence to
Shakespeare's instinctive impulse towards style in poetry, to his
native sense of the necessity for it ; and without the basis of style
everywhere, faulty though it may in some places be, we should not
have had the beauty of expression, unsurpassable for effectiveness
and charm, which is reached in Shakespeare's best passages. The

416 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

turn for style is perceptible all through English poetry, proving, to
my mind, the genuine poetical gift of the race ; this turn imparts to
our poetry a stamp of high distinction, and sometimes it doubles the
force of a poet not by nature of the very highest order, such as
Gray, and raises him to a rank beyond what his natural richness
and power seem to promise.

and Now the clauses and sentences of these passages are

discuss >n not i n h armon i ous . but it becomes difficult to attend to
any harmony that they have individually, and all but
impossible to put it together as symphonic, because of
the perpetual carillon-accompaniment (but no ! a carillon
means a tune let us say, the perpetual unsystematised
change-ringing) of the stressed word-bells or word-group-
bells. If you attend to sound only or mainly, the echo of
" energy," " honesty," " nation," " genius," " intellectual and
moral sphere," of " style," " simplicity," " manner," produces
an almost stunning clash and jangle. If you muffle the
sound, and look only at the grammar, it would seem as if
the writer had taken an oath never to use a pronoun,
never to employ a periphrase or synonym, and to leave no
single one of a group of adjectives without its single and
special noun, as in " clear language, simple language,
appropriate language, eloquent language" In the earlier
examples (v. sup.}, where he had not made up his mind
to absolute monogamy in nouns, there is nothing of this.
But in the later he has no doubt quite in accordance with
his general principles somewhat sacrificed rhythm to
inculcation, and measure to mannerism and controversial
effect.

Mansei. A fourth Oxford contemporary of the Ruskin-Arnold-

Froude group that malleus of innovators, and master of
logical treatment, Dean Mansei has been praised by a
much younger prose magician of a wholly different school,
Mr. Pater himself, for " the literary beauty of closeness,
and repression, with economy, of a fine rhetorical gift."
The praise was well deserved ; and I remember one of
Mansel's professorial lectures in the Hall of Magdalen (I
do not know whether it was ever printed) which was the
very finest example of the severer spoken prose, neither

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 417

too much observing nor too little regarding the laws of
written, that I have heard. I have forgotten, in the lapse
of five and forty years, all but a few scraps 1 hardly even
complete sentences of it ; but the following extract repro-
duces, with extraordinary vividness, the key of it as it still
rings, inarticulately but with perfect accomplishment of
rhythm, in my memory's ear. All those who know the
finest examples of seventeenth -century oratory of the
sacred kind (such as the magnificent extract from Donne
given above 2 ) will recognise something of its probable
origin ; and I have little doubt that on Mansel, as on so
many others of his time, the wand of Newman had had its
influence. But there is no copying of anybody ; there is
not even the half - independent discipleship which we
have often noted. The sweep and soar and swoop which
Hooker had introduced into English is here carried on,
with somewhat shorter and more varied flights, but with
the same general aim at, and achievement of, a close,
not exactly " dying " the composition is too much
alive, too virile, too sinewy, for that but requiescent
creating and diffusing an atmosphere of peace ; most
definitely felt, no doubt, by those who also know the
shock of the author's dialectic, and the piercing thrust of
his satire, but surely perceptible to all.

1 For one from a sermon not a lecture v. inf. p. 469.
2 Page 162.

2 E

418 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 419

One has seen it, of course, insinuated, or definitely A false censure
alleged, that prose of this kind owes its attraction to the corrected -
scrap-sugar-plums the bribes, as by a sort of bilingual
pun one might call them at once in French and English
of the all-sweetening phrase of the Authorised Version,
which are scattered about it. It is not necessary to
call the remark ungenerous, for it does not reach that
sphere of censure ; it can be at once dismissed as utterly
uncritical. If those who make it would kindly try the
experiment, they would very rapidly find what a dangerous
one it is, and how extremely likely the borrower is to be
" undone by his auxiliary." Nor, though he manages
with perfect artistry to " write up " to what he borrows,
is the general cadence of Hansel's original composition
by any means very Biblical. It is rather the balance of
the standard style, adjusted and enriched with peculiar,
though unostentatious, adroitness. " In the memory of
the past discipline, in the product of the present perfect-
ness " where the coupling and counterbalancing dactyls
of the clause-endings are led up to, in one case, by a
dochmiac and an anapaest, in the other by a third paeon
or Ionic a minore repeated, after a fashion reminding one

1 I have rarely, to use the critical slang of the day, found the plan of
scansion so "convincing" and so inevitable as here. One's pen can hardly
keep up with the demand of the feet to be marked, as they march past to
their own grave but triumphant and unmistakable music.

420 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

of the Miltonic device of selecting epithets of different
value for pairs of corresponding nouns is a phrase hardly
to be excelled in the quieter numerosity, though, in
truth, the whole passage is full of such things, which
unite themselves, in the larger effects, with an almost
consummate beauty.

Pater. But the writer who has been cited as a praiser of

Mansel is, beyond all question from our point of view,
the most remarkable of those belonging to the last
division of the nineteenth century. For all but forty
years, and (though some of his children may not know
it) to the present moment, Mr. Pater has been the father
of all such as essay to write delicately, just as Mr.
Meredith has been the father of all those who try to
write enigmatically. That in each case the famille has
been often rather deplorable} and that the intermarriage
between the two styles has sometimes produced monsters
of the most unlovely kind, may be perfectly true. But
because the children too frequently set other people's
teeth on edge, it does not follow that the grapes which
the fathers ate were sour. Those of Mr. Pater's vineyard
most certainly were not.

To carry the pedigree upwards instead of downwards
(and in good sooth it is the more gracious procession),
there can be no doubt that Pater represents another
result of that Ruskin- Newman blend which we have
already noted in Froude, but which was far more deliber-
ately, extensively, and decoratively carried out on the
south side than on the north of Brasenose Lane. If
there is one thing which, more than another, can be justly
urged against Ruskin, it is the absence of quiet. If there
is one thing, more than another, that may be put to the
credit of Pater, it is the presence thereof. Orr this apex
of English prose, if on no other, there is Rest.
His quietism. This seems to me so much the instinctive and dis-

1 The old joke on Diderot's Ptre de famille and the imitations of it. To
myself the explained allusion is nearly as detestable as the explained super-
natural ; but I am told that the public thinks differently.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 421

tinctive character of his rhythm that I have not chosen,
to illustrate it, the usual purple panel (for one cannot
insult it by calling it a " patch ") of the " Gioconda," l in
which, fine as it is, there is just the slightest hint of an
intention to " set the trumpet to the lips and blow."
Another passage of the same essay, if less definitely
rounded off, seems to me preferable ; and I think that it,
with yet another from Marius, will suffice. But it must
always be remembered that the care of the paragraph
was one of Mr. Pater's first and greatest anxieties ; when
I remarked on it, in the Fortnightly essay referred to in
the Preface of this book, he wrote to me expressing
special gratification, and acknowledging that it had been
one of his principal objects. But his paragraph was not,
as too many people are under the delusion that a para-
graph must necessarily be, brought to some deeply marked,
insistent, peremptorily " concluding " end. He liked
and he had a marvellous faculty in doing it to drop off
at this end with a new sort of modified aposwpesis, re-
placing the actual abruptness of that figure by a gentle
glide. However, to the examples :

1 "The presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters," etc.
(Studies in the History of the Renaissance (London, 1873), p. 1 18). Any one
who cares to look it up, or, remembering it, analyses his remembrance, will
find that Lilith-foot, the minor Ionic (with its attendant dochmiac, the
penultimate long, and amphibrach, for longer and shorter variation), as
prevalent as usual.

422 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 423

There is scarcely, I think, in all the examples given
in this book, one more profitable for study, in gross and
in detail, than this. It is my purpose only to give hints
and outlines for such a study here : the scansion contains
the whole of it, in what should, by this time, be sufficiently
readable shorthand. The first paragraph, to a hasty
reader, whose attention has not been drawn to that
scansion, may contain nothing, or hardly anything,
structurally or superficially different, not merely from the
" standard " style of the eighteenth or early nineteenth
century, but from the whole general construction and
ordonnance of the more orderly English prose since
Dryden or Temple. The diction itself is neither positively
modern nor definitely archaic. Except a possible suspicion
of the Arnoldian " What I tell you three times is true," x
there is nothing that even approaches a trick, and in
particular there is not, I think, a single instance of that
peculiar picturesque or imaginative catachresis of words
that introduction of them with a slightly new meaning,
and in slightly unexpected company which was begun by
Donne and Browne and their satellites, which disappeared
with the " school of prose and sense " in prose as well as in

1 " Return to antiquity," " return to nature." And here Major Pendennis
might interject, " It was only twice, sir !"

424 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

verse, and which, recovering itself and its powers with the
Romantics, reached in different ways its furthest reason-
ably possible with Mr. Pater himself and Mr. Meredith.
Even Conyers Middleton could, as far as this paragraph
is concerned, have found no things that he might not
with all grace of congruity have thought, nor any words
that he might not, with equal grace, have written.

But the things, though he might have thought them,
would not have " reached " Conyers so ; and the words,
though they might have come from his pen, would have
been arranged by it in a very different manner. We
have seen that in the seventeenth-eighteenth-century sober
style, though you can apply the system of quantitative
scansion as you can to almost everything spoken or
written by an educated Englishman the process has. in
differing degrees, but more or less uniformly in kind, a
certain air of superfluity and unnaturalness. It neither
evolves nor explains any music : it merely shows that
there is little or none to be explained or evolved. Here
it is entirely different. The application of the test at
once interprets that difference of the general rhythm
which a merely faithful reading must have intimated
already to ear of body or ear of mind. That mysterious
consonance or symphony the existence of which I have
been tracing, if I do not pretend to have mastered the
complete secrets of its counterpoint is here, as it is not
in Conyers Middleton. And the partition and quanti-
fication justify themselves, in this instance, as clearly as, in
that, they were felt to be things out of place.

But in the second paragraph a further, a more obvious,
but a much more dazzling and wonderful transformation
is effected. The cunning, but simple and somewhat
suppressed, harmony of the earlier writing extends and
sublimes itself into polyphony, as unique and as "original
as anything that we have seen. The tone is still quiet
in fact the easy undulation of the first paragraph is
exchanged for a much slower movement, with fewer
paeons and dochmiacs, though both are thrown in for
variety's sake, and especially to prevent the thing from

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 425

being too languid and too " precious." But most of the
feet are trisyllabic, dissyllabic, or monosyllabic ; and the
clause-, sentence-, and paragraph-closes are distinguished
by that curious muffled arrest which we have noticed
momentary suspension of movement without a jar a
sort of whispered " Hush ! " Here, too, you get those
slight idiosyncratic diversions of words (for catachresis,
after all, is a bad name to throw at so beautiful a dog)
to which allusions have been made above, and which affect
rhythm so powerfully, though so quietly, by the slight
shock they give to the understanding "green shadow,"
" solemn . . . water," " delicate place." Here, too, is the
immixture of actual metre or suggestion of metre, but
far more intricate and nuanced than in Ruskin or
Kingsley ; * together with undulations, 2 not definitely
metrical, but infinitely subtler than those of Gibbon.
Yet all this is done without the least touch of such
preliminary warning and advertisement as is frequent in
De Quincey and Landor, and as may be seen perhaps
even in his own longer passage on the " Gioconda." A
new paradox suggests itself, to take place beside Dryden's
old one of " silence invading the ear." Silence is blended
with sound, and the charms of both invade and soothe
the ear together.

On this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading hand
from afar, reached him ; only, the peculiarly tranquil influence of its
first hour increased steadily upon him in a manner with which, as he
conceived, the aspects of the place he was then visiting had some-
thing to do. The air there, air supposed to possess the singular
property of restoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. An
even veil of lawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky ; and
under its broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time came
out upon the yellow old temples, the elegant pillared circle of the
shrine of the patronal Sibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with
the ancient fundamental rock. Some half-conscious motive of poetic
grace would appear to have determined their grouping ; in part

1 "And the un|torn shells | lie thick [up]on the sand, . . .

2 " And the gathering of the equatorial waters above the polar. ... He
who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature."

426 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

resisting, partly going along with, the natural wildness and harshness
of the place, its floods and precipices. An air of immense age
possessed, above all, the vegetation around a world of evergreen
trees the olives especially, older than how many generations of
men's lives ! fretted and twisted by the combining forces of life and
death into every conceivable caprice of form. In the windless
weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the immemorial
waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human
habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to
count, even in this time-worn place, as an image of unalterable rest.
Yet the clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was
silently quickening everything in the late February afternoon, and
the unseen violet refined itself through the air. It was as if the
spirit of life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate
revelation of itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work.

This second passage, as it seems to me, occupies, with
remarkable exactness, a middle place, in point of rhythm,
between the first and second paragraphs of the other. I
have not scanned it ; though, as I read it, I can see the
scansion just as clearly as if I had a proof of it with the
quantity -marks lying before me. It is evidently on
something the same level as the fine pieces of description
that we gave from De Quincey and Landor earlier : it is
not so uniquely or insistently Paterian as the instances of
the curiosity of Lionardo, but it retains enough of its
creator's quality to exhibit that quality pretty clearly.
The possibility of " roar " imaging " rest " as subtle as it
is obvious l and true is itself something of a key-note, or
at least a key. I wish he had not written " elegant " a
word which seems to me to have been so irretrievably
" sullied by ignoble use " that, except for technical
purposes, or used deliberately in malam fartem, it should
be left to bleach itself by time's kind office for at least a
century or two. Otherwise the thing is faultless as
things in the middle style should be, though those in the
very highest need or should not.
His apes Nothing, yet once more, could be easier, or more

delightful to me, than to multiply extracts from Mr.
Pater ; but, as I have striven to make clear, this is not,

1 The subtlety of the obvious is what some innocent decriers of that same
are incapable ot seeing.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 427

primarily, a Book of Beauties. His methods were, of
course, methods if not exactly " aleatory," for they
required as much calculation as chess certainly perilous ;
and he did not always show himself master of them.
Some early " turns " in the Studies he cancelled ; and in
the latest books, from Gaston de Latour onwards (though
I think the accusation of " slovenliness," which I have
heard made by some critics, is unjust) it is certain that
they did not always " come off." In particular, the
demon of burlesque suggestion pretty early marked his
prey ; and got it once or twice in Mr. Pater himself, con-
stantly in Mr. Pater's imitators. A sentence of one of
the earliest of these, the late Mr. Frederick Myers
" to trace the passion and the anguish which whirl along
some lurid vista toward a sun that sets in storm, or gaze
across silent squares by summer moonlight amid a smell
of dust and flowers," * is just a little dangerous in itself.
And it was suggested at the time by an urbane critic,
that the rhythm would be positively improved, and the
sense not materially damaged, if you read " gaze by
moonlight across summer dust and flowers amid a smell
of silent squares." Here perhaps, even more than else-
where, the way to Hell is hard by the gate of Heaven ;
yet we need scarcely be less grateful to those who open
to us the ports of salvation.

No one with the slightest interest in literature can Mr. Swin-
require to be told that Mr. Swinburne could, from his burne '
own prose writings alone, supply material for a very
elaborate dissertation on prose rhythm. Indeed, it is one
of the " Dick Minim " criticisms respecting him that he con-
fused the limits of the two harmonies, and that, in the one
as in the other, he pushed the exuberance of his language
beyond the permitted verge of either. From the first his
virtuosity in the " numerous " kind was evident ; and it
was evident, likewise, who were his masters. To two of

1 The context of this remarkable fioritura cannot be said to lessen its
risk of frigidity ; for it is a description of the way in which William Words-
worth did not regard London.

428 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

them Carlyle and Newman he has paid magnificent
OpeTrrpa l in his adaptation of the final chorus of the
Eumenides. I do not at the moment remember any
similar passage about Mr. Ruskin. But no reader of the
Blake, when it appeared, could possibly avoid seeing the
debt, of suggestion at least, to Modern Painters. I have
never known whether the following remarkable passage
was written before or after that quoted above from Mr.
Pater the dates of publication would prove nothing, for
the author of the Studies was accustomed to exercise a
thoroughly Horatian custody over his writings before he
published them. And, when the two are examined, the
resemblance will be found to be more superficial than
essential. But, superficially, it certainly exists, and the
Ruskinian connection, elsewhere more patent still, is less
idiosyncratised than in Pater.

The mixed There is, in all these straying songs, the freshness of clear wind,
influences in and purity of blowing rain ; here a perfume as of dew or grass
him. against the sun, there a keener smell of sprinkled shingle and brine-

bleached sand ; some growth or breath everywhere of blade or herb
leaping into life under the green wet light of spring ; some colour
of shapely cloud or mound of moulded wave. The verse pauses
and musters, and falls always as a wave does, with the same patience
of gathering form and rounded glory of springing curve, and sharp,
sweet flash of dishevelled and flickering foam, as it curls over,
showing the sun through its soft heaving side in veins of gold that
inscribe, and jewels of green that inlay, the quivering and sundering
skirt or veil of thinner water, throwing upon the tremulous space of
narrowing sea in front, like a reflection of lifted and vibrating hair,
the windy shadow of its shaken spray. 2

There, of course, the last clause is a pure blank-verse
line, as naked, as unblushing, and as beautiful as the

1 For we care nothing about his disagreement with their principles ; and
the tribute paid to " the eternal substance of their greatness " is of the amplest,
all the ampler for the difference of views. The piece referred to is the ' ' Two
Leaders " (they are not named, but unmistakable) of the second Poems and
Ballads (1878). There are, of course, plenty of spits and spurts at Carlyle,
especially later, when Carlyle's own unadvised words about some of Mr.
Swinburne's darlings had been more unadvisedly published. But they do
not disannul the earlier and nobler home-sending, vir' etitppovi Trofj.irq., of the
great and honoured ones who were to him the children, to others the
watchmen, of the night.

2 William Blake (London, 1868), p. 134.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 429

Aphrodite whom the context from which it rises suggests ;
while more than one or two or three others hide them-
selves, or half show themselves, as attendant Oceanides in
the quivering veil. As for the diction and imagery, not
merely would Vida that immortal has put on a good
deal of mortality, and does not matter much class it
with crines magnae genetricis for " grass " as an awful
example of too fanciful writing, but I fear that Aristotle
would put it with the exercises of Lycophron, and that
even Longinus would discover in it the parenthyrson. But
we are not as ancients were ; and though in some respects
they may have had the better of us, let us at least have
the profits and the solace of our difference. We can
take this as good if we choose ; and if I had as many
votes l for literature as the late Reverend Washbourne
West of Lincoln College, Oxford, had for Parliament, I
would give them all for its goodness.

The Blake is full of such things, though I think this Examples in
is the best. It exhibits, and they all exhibit, that delight gjj and
in alliteration which, again, Dick Minim sagely reprehends.
But it shows a curious contrast to Pater and Newman-
less to Ruskin and Carlyle in its tendency to make the
closes of clause, sentence, sentence-batch, and paragraph
distinctly emphatic? I hardly know a better combined
example of these two tendencies in little than a phrase
(I quote from memory, my copy of Under the Microscope
having retired from ken at the moment) in which Mr.
Swinburne summed up part of the remarkable paper

devoted just fifty years ago by Charles Baudelaire, to

^
Wagner and Tannhauser 8 the words " grown diabolic

1 I forget whether legend says fourteen or forty-nine ; it adds that they
were selected with such foresight and ingenuity that they could all be
exercised from Oxford in the course of an average general election. Mr.
West's character, in other respects, may not have been perfect (though I
have heard that he was a much better fellow than Liberal party spirit among
dons, and resentment of Proctorial excesses among undergraduates, used to
declare him). But he certainly ought, since his votes were always given on the
right side, to have a light time in Purgatory for this.

2 Our earliest preceptist on prose rhythm would certainly have approved
this. See App. II.

3 (Euvres, vol. iii. ; UArt Romantique. pp. 207-267 (Paris, 1868).

430 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

among ages that would not accept her as divine."
In this phrase, perhaps, we get another glimpse of
one of those panthers quested so long and caught so
rarely a capital example of prose rhythm of the
elaborate kind, which lends its processes to pretty clear
analysis. This phrase, it will be seen, descends in
shortening magnitudes of feet, through dochmiac, third
paeon, and amphibrach (a combination which, I think,
almost deserves the designation of a "/rare-metre "), and
then continues in feet, trisyllabic, but different from the

amphibrach, bacchic (for I leave "uxepter" to coster-
mongers and phoneticians), anapaest. One of the main
points in it is the length and fulness and hurry of the
opening, with this descent, the level progress of the

trisyllabic feet, and the clench of the ending " divine."
That Mr. Swinburne sometimes overdid this emphasis
that he indulged occasionally in an almost Kinglakian
exaltation, in antithetic epigram, of the brass above
the reeds and the strings, may be true. But nobody
except Shelley, and perhaps Thackeray, has ever, in
verse or prose, completely escaped turning a manner into
a mannerism.

Yet besides the nineteenth-century influences, one of
which has yet to be mentioned, there was another, conveyed
perhaps partly through this postponed one, which was
noticeable even in the Blake itself, and which became
stronger and stronger. This was an almost Johnsonian
tendency to antithesis and balance, sometimes couched in
the shorter and more pithy form of the great lexico-
grapher's conversational style, and sometimes periodised
into something very like a caricature of his most elaborate
written manner. It may have come partly direct for
Mr. Swinburne's natural tendency to admire everything
good in literature, and everything noble in life, got the
better, in Johnson's case as in others, of his adscititious
crotchets, political and other. But I think it came also,
and largely, from Landor, in respect to whom, and in
respect of whom, nature and the crotchets rather unluckily

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 431

joined. It is at any rate certain that the somewhat
ponderous and occasionally overtoppling irony to which
this style lends itself so easily, and which, when Mr. Swin-
burne indulged in it, always used to send cold water
down his admirers' backs, is much more Landorian than
Johnsonian. For the God of Humour whose functions,
I suppose, were held in commendam with his many others
by Hermes in Greece, while nobody in Rome, except
perhaps Plautus, Catullus, and Petronius could have found
the way to his temple never deserted Johnson ; while he
not only never visited Landor, but cruelly sent a lying
spirit in his place. 1

This infusion, however, sometimes produced magnifi-
cent passages and constantly very happy fragments ; it
certainly often makes Mr. Swinburne's prose remember-
able beyond the wont of the usual nineteenth-century
medium, the impressions of which, even when caressing
and delightful, are apt to be faint. It is unlucky, no
doubt, that any man let alone a great poet who could be,
when he chose, almost as great a prose writer should,
not long after reproaching (justly enough) George Chap-
man with the clumsiness of his style, revenge himself
(again justly enough) on a private enemy by such an appal-
ling sentence as that quoted beneath. 2 But " the brother-

1 His conduct to Mr. Swinburne himself was more capricious. That poet
could be both humorous and witty ; but even his wit, and still more his
humour, had the drawback of being exceedingly " undependable. " The very
light and good phrase about Chastelard and Queen Mary, "growing up to
years of indiscretion " in Valois society, occurs on the same page of the
Miscellanies with a sneer at the Jesuits, the point of which is not merely
blunted, but absolutely swallowed up and lost, in a volume of verbiage.

2 It would not be fair to put it into the text. But, for all the ninefold
involution of its caricatured periodicity, it has a fine rhetorical swing, provided
that breath and brain give you leave to last it out. " Such a Crispinulus or
Crispinaccio would have found his proper element in an atmosphere whose
fumes should never have been inhaled by the haughty and high-souled author
of The Poetaster ; and, from behind his master's chair, with no need to seek,
for fear if not for shame, the dastardly and lying shelter of a pseudonym
which might at a pinch have been abjured, and the responsibility shifted from
his own shoulders to those of a well-meaning and invisible friend, the
laurelled lackey of King James might as securely have launched his libels
against the highest heads of poets to whom in that age all looked up, and
who would have looked down on him, as ever did the illustrious Latinist
Buchanan against the mother of the worthy patron whose countenance would

432 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

less Antigone of our stage " (for Cordelia) is almost
fltusguam-'La.ndorian in its combined felicity of sense, and

weight, and rhythm. " That precious | waif of piratical |
salvage which we owe | to the happy rapacity of a

hungry | publisher" would not have been written exactly
by the eighteenth-century Johnson ; but I fancy that, if
the passage was before his twentieth-century ghost, it may
have said, when he met Mr. Swinburne the other day,
" Why, sir ! it is pretty well ; but you should not alliterate
so much." And just below these words, the rhythmical
secrets of the best Johnsonian style are hit in two con-
secutive sentences. " The deeper complexities of the
subject are merely indicated." " Simple and trenchant
outlines of character are to be supplemented by features
of subtler suggestion, and infinite interfusion."

In this style composite indeed, but made a real
" order " by his own genius Mr. Swinburne filled nearly
half a score of volumes with a prose which as one re-reads
it, sometimes after many years, sometimes after short
intervals between former perusals, loses little if anything
of its charm, and proves itself, as has been said, strangely
rememberable and singularly remembered. He could,
when he chose, write with almost perfect simplicity ;
much in the review of Sir Walter Scott's Journal, and the
" Recollections of Professor Jowett," which will be found
opening the Studies in Prose and Poetry, could not be
more free from ampullae of any kind than it is. But
this was when he was at once thoroughly interested in
his subject, and not over-excited by it. When he was at
all in a rage, things were in a more parlous condition ;
but whenever he did not try irony, he even then wrote
very finely. Extreme admiration of the combative kind

probably have sufficed to protect the meanest and obscurest creature of his
common and unclean favour against all recrimination on the part of Shake-
speare or of Jonson, of Beaumont or of Webster, of Fletcher or of Chapman."
One thinks of the exclamation of Mr. Weller after the equally well -deserved,
and equally breath - exhausting, chastisement of Stiggins ; but the actual
composition is all right, and the conduct of the cadence exemplary.

xi RUSK IN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 433

was again perilous. 1 I myself, mot chttif, think almost as
highly of Hugo's poetry as he did. But I confess that, in
his Victorian commentings, one never knows whether
there is to be such gorgeous prose-poetry as the overture
of the review of LHomme qui rit, which I shall proceed
to quote, or such splutters as one which I shall not quote,
but which may be found, by any one who chooses, face to
face with the masterpiece, at the second page-opening of
the Essays and Studies.

Once only in my life I have seen the likeness of Victor Hugo's
genius. Crossing over when a boy, from Ostend, I had the fortune to
be caught in mid-channel by a thunderstorm strong enough to delay
the packet some three good hours over the due time. About midnight,
the thundercloud was right overhead, full of incessant sound and
fire, lightening and darkening so rapidly that it seemed to have life,
and a delight in its life. At the same hour, the sky was clear to the
west, and all along the sea-line there sprang and sank, as to music,
a restless dance or chase of summer lightnings across the lower sky ;
a race and riot of lights, beautiful and rapid as a course of shining
Oceanides along the tremulous floor of the sea. Eastward, at the
same moment, the space of clear sky was higher and wider, a
splendid semicircle of too intense purity to be called blue ; it was of
no colour nameable to man ; and midway in it, between the storm
and the sea, hung the motionless full moon ; Artemis watching with
a serene splendour of scorn the battle of Titans and the revel of
nymphs, from her stainless and Olympian summit of divine, in-
different light. Underneath and about us the sea was paved with
flame ; the whole water trembled and hissed with phosphoric fire ;
even through the wind and thunder I could hear the crackling and
sputtering of the water-sparks. In the same heaven and at the
same hour, there shone at once the three contrasted glories, golden
and fiery and white, of moonlight and of the double lightnings,
forked and sheet ; and under all this miraculous heaven lay a
flaming floor of water. 2

1 A complete re-reading of the whole prose work, in chronological order, has
only increased my own admiration, always great, for the extraordinary felicity,
and the broad-cast range, of Mr. Swinburne's impartial judgments on English
and other literature. But when the crazes took him either way he was wont
to mistake, in the language of Theodore Hook's fiendishly clever skit on poor
Queen Caroline's mock court

" Lord for a man ;

For a maid, Lady Anne ;

And Alderman for a beau beau !

And Alderman for a beau ! "

2 After reading this gorgeous piece it is amusing to recall the following
words, "the detestable as well as debateable land of pseudo-poetic rhapsody
in hermaphroditic prose, after the least admirable manner of such writers as

2 F

434 A HISTOR Y OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

Now here again, of course, there will be " murmurs and
movements among the audience." <&{\oi avBpet persons
not only dear, but good and wise, for some of whom one
has unfeigned and unconventional respect will say, " Oh !
but this ought to have been put into poetry ; it has no
business in prose, and in fact is half over the fence already."
This I most humbly and politely, but also most firmly
and irrevocably, deny. In the first place, fully as I believe
in the doctrine that the poet is to number " the streaks of
the tulip," yet I admit that he is not to number them too
much that he is to generalise and ^realise, to adjust and
omit, as the rules of his art may require. Here the artist
wanted to put, and was right in putting, everything that
was there * a wealth of detail which would have been
out of place in verse. In the second place, he has most
triumphantly vindicated the position of highly toned
and highly coloured prose, by making its tones and its
colours, its diction and its ordonnance and its rhythm, dis-
tinctly non-poetic. A novice or a bungler would almost
certainly have written " have I seen," and so have given a
handle to objectors to cry " Poetic inversion ! " But
Athene, who, perhaps out of odium theologicum, had not
touched Jeremy Taylor's hand or ear, touched Mr. Swin-
burne's, and it went right. At two or three other points
(I leave to the reader what should be the pleasure of
finding them) blank verse lay ahead, and would almost
certainly have been run into, not merely by novices or
bunglers, but by many great ones. Mr. Swinburne,
beckoned by his Oceanides, steers clear of it, keeping
throughout to the deep waters of pure prose rhythm.

" From her stainless j and Olympian summit, of divine, |
indifferent light" is one of the things that one carries

De Quincey" (Miscellanies, pp. 222, 223). Now, as I have ventured to
demonstrate, De Quincey's prose is not " hermaphroditic " its charms may-
be the charms of Felise or Faustine, they are not those of Fragoletta. But
De Quincey, we know, had blasphemed some of Mr. Swinburne's gods, and
was a Tory, and perhaps, in Swift's too famous words, " deserved the gallows
for something else ; and so he shall swing."

1 Those who know their Hazlitt will recognise the quotation.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 435

about in memory like the great verse-jewels of the older
harmony a beryl with a song in it that has nothing
harmful, but a joy, and a marvel, and a blessing for ever. l

In touching on the prose of William Morris, it is hardly wmiam
possible to avoid a small excursus of controversy, such as M r s 7~

" Wardour

I have elsewhere for the most part eschewed. Critics of street "or
worship have pronounced his method "Wardour Street" ; not?
and in Wardour Street, or out of it, there can, it seems,
come no good thing. Well ! that was pretty much Ben
Jonson's objection to Spenser ; and I do not think the
best judgment of posterity has endorsed it. For my part,
I have no more antecedent objection to thing or person
because the street from which it comes is named " War-
dour " than I have preference for it because that street is
named " Regent " or " Rivoli." All I want to know is
whether it is beautiful and delightful. For me, I find
beauty and delight in Morris's following of Mandeville
and Malory and some saga-men, not only now and then,
not only not seldom, but very nearly always. It is, of
course, like all falsettos, liable to a breakdown ; and
this sometimes, though not very often, occurs. At other
times it seems to me extremely agreeable, and very
nearly your only style for the matter. If anybody does
not want the matter, well and good ; let him leave it
alone. I want the matter, and I like the style.

One remarkable point about it, as it concerns our
department, is that, though written by a poet who was a
quite exceptional master of metre, there is less that is
decidedly metrical about it much less than there is in

1 We may note here, too, an admirable example "in eadem materia" of
the difference in the rhythms. Omit "and " :

" From her stain | less Olym|pian sum) mil
Of divine, | indif) ferent light "

is pure verse, and the last line requires no omission to make it so. But the
foot distribution is quite different ; and no one with an ear would read it so in
prose. Of course, the singular persons who ask plaintively, " How a difference
in naming the feet can alter the rhythm ? " may see no alteration here. But to
me a spondee or iamb followed and preceded by an anapaest, and an anapaest
and a pseon followed by a monosyllable, produce rhythms as different as a
hawk from a hand-saw.

436 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

De Quincey or in Pater, both of whom deliberately endea-
voured to put non-metre on a level with metre, not (as
their heartiest admirer may admit) without a certain
reason in the fact that the gods had apparently not made
them poetical. But this absence is a proof that the
medium " comes," as the gardeners say, " true " that it is
a real mimesis of its original, and not a mere stealing,
copying, or " faking " of an imitation of another kind. If
the reader will turn back to Malory himself, or even to
the account of him here, he will see how that miraculous
" compiler " took solid verses from his predecessors, and
welded or melted them into perfect prose rhythm. Morris
borrows less, but he observes an equally perfect prose form.
It is part also of the " truth " of the revival that there are
few distinctly purple passages : those who know their
Malory are, of course, well aware that the purplest of the
Morte the dirge on Lancelot is at least possibly not
part of the original, but added when taste became more
rhetorical. The rhythm is simply narrative or conversa-
tional, with the due tone and colour of romance thrown
in. It is even not particularly easy to select passages
short enough for our custom, and yet contributing the full
merit of the medium. The following, from The Well at
the World's End * (the longest, and perhaps on the whole
the best, of all the series) may do for one :

Again he spoke, and his voice was weaker yet. " Kneel down
by me, or I may not tell thee what I would ; my voice dieth before
me." / Then Ralph knelt down by him ; for he began to have a
deeming of what he was ; and he put his face close to the dying
man's, and said to him, " I am here ; what wouldst thou ? " / Said
the wild man very feebly, " I did not much for thee, time was ; how
might I when I loved her so sorely ? But I did a little. Believe it,
and do so much for me that I may lie by her side when I am dead,
who never lay by her living. For into the cave I durst go never." /
Then Ralph knew him, that he was the tall champion whom he had
met first at the churchyard gate of Netherton ; so he said, " I know

1 I have sometimes wondered whether he took the very striking description
of the well itself from that of the Well of St. Senanus on the wild Clare coast
\njack Hinton. The suggestion may raise a laugh ; but Morris, who knew
good things when he saw them, may have found them in Charles Lever as
well as in Charlotte Yonge.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 437

thee now, and I will promise to do thy will therein. I am sorry that
I have slain thee ; forgive it me." / A mocking smile came into the
dying man's eyes, and he said, whispering, " Richard it was, not
thou." The smile spread over his face ; he strove to turn more
towards Ralph, and said in very faint whisper, " The last time." /
No more he said, but gave up the ghost presently. 1

If that is " Wardour Street," and Wardour Street can
give us such rhythms as that, I would it were as long as
the American Avenues that can count the house numbers
by two or three thousand nay, as long as the road from
this world to the next.

About Mr. George Meredith, who has divided with Mr. George Mere-
Swinburne and Mr. Pater the tutorship of most elaborate Meredithesity
prose-writers for the last thirty or forty years, it is always
difficult, for a person whom the gods have been kind or
unkind enough to make critical, to write. For as such a
person cannot write in a rage, and as it is equally im-
possible for him to write, about this subject, in a rapture, he
runs the chance of almost Swinburnian excommunications
from some of the rapturous, and of polite commiseration
from others. To say that Mr. Meredith could not be
rhythmical, and admirably so, in prose as in verse, would
be absurd. To say that in prose where he has not, to
my remembrance, let us explicitly into the secret, as he has
in verse he generally would not, is simply the truth.
That there may be a rhythm of the topsy-turvy a kind
of quaternion-rhythm I do not deny ; but in the existing
conditions and dimensions of the English-literary universe
it is difficult to discover, here, anything even corresponding
to the symmetry with which, in the good old days, little
boys used to turn actual corporeal " cart-wheels " on
Holborn Hill. When a writer is perpetually endeavouring

1 I have taken the liberty, while indicating by the slant down-stroke /
the author's short paragraphs, to close them up, in order to show that nothing
like the stave-division of Ossian or the Leaves of Grass is necessary to bring
out the rhythm. It is quite pure and continuous prose, though exquisitely,
however quietly, musical. As a Morrisian of nearly the oldest guard, I may
perhaps be allowed to express pleasure at seeing how, in various quarters, the
prejudice against this delightful poet as a mere improvisator e, pleasant enough
but rather trivial, is lifting and flying. And though the prose has not yet
shared this justice, I think it will come.

438 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

to make his reader see stars by impinging him on an
abutment of blank wall, rhythm is needless and not to be
expected. " The irony of Providence sent him by a cook's
shop, where the mingled steam of meats and puddings
rushed out upon the wayfarer like ambushed bandits, and
seized him and dragged him in, or sent him qualmish and
humbled on his way." The actual cadence here is not
ill ; but you have hardly time to appreciate it, while you
are wondering whether ambushed bandits rushing out
would make you " qualmish and humbled," whether a
" qualmish " passer-by would feel " humbled," even putting
the bandits out of the question, and whether one humbled
by hunger and poverty would not rather feel " pangs "
than "qualms."

The rhythmical drawback to this fantastic style which
is occasionally, no doubt, attractive enough in itself is that
it is perpetually opposing snags and ledges to the clear
current of the composition. Sometimes these utterly defy
all harmony. They are, of course (let me observe it to
obviate the withering of my withers by the remark of a
pious Meredithian that " there are some, perhaps many, who
lack the intelligence and the sensibility that can alone
admit them within the charmed circle of appreciative
readers "), perfectly deliberate. But here is one drawn
from a large context of similar utterances, the opening
chapter of Diana of the Crossways.

No blame whatever, one would say, if he had been less copious
or not so subservient in recording the lady's utterances ; for though
the wit of a woman may be terse, quite spontaneous, as this lady's
assuredly was, here and there she is apt to spin it out of a museful
mind at her toilette or by the lonely fire, and sometimes it is
imitative ; admirers should beware of holding it up to the withering
glare of print ; she herself, quoting an obscure maxim-monger, says
of these lapidary sentences, that they have merely the value of
chalk eggs which lure the thinker to sit ; and tempt the* vacuous to
train for the like, one might add, besides flattering the world to
imagine itself richer than it is in eggs that are golden. 1

Now I can quite understand a competent judge saying

1 I wonder how many of the charmed etcetera have perceived the under-
current of leprechaun-\ik.e satire in these words.

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 439

that this way of writing is in its way precious to the
mind ; but I can hardly imagine any granting to it the
favour and the affection of the ear. Of course Mr.
Meredith was perfectly well able (and now and then,
specially in the The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, con-
descended to display the ability) to lay eggs all golden in
sound as well as in sense. But, then, at others, he con-
descended, in another sense, to write things worse than
the passages quoted things that not I or Cluvienus at
our worst could outgo in positive badness of style and
sound.

The worthy creature's anxiety was of the pattern of cavaliers
escorting dames an exaggeration of honest zeal ; or present example
of clownish goodness it might seem ; until entering the larch and
firwood among the beaten heights, there was a rocking and straining
of the shallow-rooted trees in a tremendous gust, that quite pardoned
him for curving his arm in a hoop about her, and holding a shoulder
in front.

Here, as so often, one thinks of his old housemate Mr.
Swinburne's happy retorsion of Ben's famous bravado :

By God, 'tis good ; and if you like't you may.
By God, 'tis bad; and worse than tongue can say.

And the fact is, that here, as of Ben, and as perhaps is
necessary, both are true.

It has been said that Mr. Meredith and Mr. Pater,
sometimes separately, sometimes together, have been the
real patterns of the various attempts made, during the last
thirty or forty years, to " raise " (I think that is what they
call it) the poor English language " to a higher power."
Mr. Swinburne, immensely followed at first in verse, was
also imitated to some extent in prose. But the mimesis
mocked the endeavours in too open a fashion, and the
sublime effort of an American poet in the one harmony

Where the cocoa and cactus are neighbours,
Where the fig and the fir-tree are one

was, rather always than occasionally, paralleled in the
other. Meredith and Pater have kept the field as
objects of imitation, and the results have been sometimes

440 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CHAP.

very terrible, often very amusing. I once began a
museum of awful examples, but abandoned it as rather
unfair in fact, as I have ventured to argue elsewhere, I
think taking living authors for subjects, unless in the
official way of business, and at their own quasi-
invitation as a reviewer, is doubtful literary " cricket,"
though it can plead Mr. Arnold as a great practitioner.
But I do " remember, forget, and remember" (for I did my
deliberate and fairly successful utmost to bury name, title,
and place of publication in oblivion) a magazine article not
of the last century, and not, I think, far back in the last
decade, which, though obviously sincere, was the most
triumphant and pyramidal composition of cadenced
nonsense and meaningless Marivaudage-Meredithese, that
Aristophanes or Lucian in Greek, Jonathan Swift or
Henry Duff Traill in English, could ever have compassed
as a parody-caricature.

Stevenson. It would be difficult, either for my personal satisfaction,
or for the suitableness of things, to leave out Mr.
Stevenson ; but to exhibit that " sedulous apery " of his,
which he so frankly confessed, would require far more space
than can be spared. It is a commonplace now that only
at the end of his too short life did he acquire that he was
even then but on the point of acquiring a style perfectly
natural, free, and his own. One piece and one only a
well-known and early one, but very characteristic shall
be given, because in it, especially from the " apish " side,
there are to be seen mingled two of the most opposite
influences that can possibly be imagined at first sight, the
influences of Ruskin and of Macaulay. At the last name
some may utter shouts of surprise, contempt, or horror, but
I have little doubt of the fact ; and few younger or even
middle-aged critics of the present day know how all-
pervading, even when and where it was not- exactly
relished, was the influence of the History and the Essays
up to a period quite late enough for Stevenson to have
felt it. However, it shall speak for itself, and perhaps may
well close this chapter, with a short postscript of " excuses
for absence." Nor need we, I think, deal with his

xi RUSKIN AND LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 441

interesting discussions of style; for they are rather general,
and would require some controversy which I wish to keep
out of this book.

At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are
all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life ? Do the
stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother
earth below our resting bodies ? Even shepherds and old country-
folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as
to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. Towards
two in the morning they declare the thing takes place ; and
neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleasant
incident. We are disturbed in our slumber, only like the luxurious
Montaigne, " that we may the better and more sensibly relish it."
We have a moment to look up on the stars. And there is a special
pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse
with all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, that we have
escaped out of the Bastille of civilisation, and are become, for the
time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock.

When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty.
My tin was standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a
draught ; and feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion,
sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured,
jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the
Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and
stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see
Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether ; I
could hear her steadily munching at the sward ; but there was not
another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over
the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour of the sky,
as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish gray
behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue black between the
stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I
could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette ; and at
each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated and became for a
second the highest light in the landscape.

I had at one time thought of extending my examples
from this chapter of prose. I had intended to cite and
analyse the mastery over the " collect " euphony
marvellously difficult of the English Prayer-Book, shown
by Christina Rossetti, that consummate mistress of rhythm
in verse ; the living-dream fancies of the author of
Phantasies and The Portent ; the admirably sinewy prose
of Huxley ; the quaintness and " race," often blended
with positive beauty, of Mr. Black more ; the vigorous

442 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM CH. xi

antithesis and seldom - overdone epigram of my friend
the late Mr. Henley ; and the almost uncanny ease
and grace of that wonderful unfinished History of
England which (I do not know what have been its
later fortunes) its publisher told me at the time " nobody
would buy or read," and which came, in changed
harmony as under a changed author's name, from the
same pen that wrote lonica. But yet, once more, this is
not a Book of Beauties ; and it ought not to be made too
long a book ; and we must say something general before
we close, and perhaps add an Appendix or two after the
main curtain has dropped. I hope it will not have been
a bad concert ; but probably nobody will be sorry that it
should be done.

CONCLUSION

WHETHER at, or towards, the conclusion of the present
attempt the well-meaning adventurer is, to any consider-
able extent, in the traditional position of " master " to
himself as he was when he began it, I shall not pretend
to say. That he is at least more conscious than ever of
the audacity of the attempt itself, I can heartily asseverate.
Yet the increased consciousness need not, I trust, be
incompatible with a hope, if not a belief, that something
at least has been attempted, even that an appreciable, if
inadequate, something has been done. If I have not
climbed the mountain, I think I may perhaps be allowed
to have provided a convenient shop at its foot, where
maps, and rope, and axes, and alpenstocks, and perhaps
some provisions and stimulants for the journey, can be
obtained a little more conveniently than they could be
obtained before. And it may here be possible, not merely
to add to the information already given by summarising
it, but to deduce, or rather infer, some more general
considerations than have hitherto, save now and then in
a glance, been ventured upon.

As in reference to Prosody, so in reference to Prose
Rhythm, I disclaim, detest, abominate, and in every other
English and classical form renounce, the attempt to show
how a prose-harmonist should develop his harmony. But
I hope that I may perhaps have shown, and may now
show farther, how the harmonists of the past have
developed theirs. And I have tried to do this by using
continuously that principle of arrangement by feet which,
though with proper distinctions for the language, forces

443

444 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

itself upon Englishmen, to my thinking, quite as inevit-
ably as, according to Quintilian in the passage which I
have used as motto, it forced itself upon Romans.

To a certain extent, of course, the old demurrer, " Does
English admit of feet at all?" remains ; but I shall take
the liberty to neglect it, merely referring to what I have
said already in the History of Prosody. There are, no
doubt, some differences in the two cases ; but they are
differences mainly, if not wholly, of " administration."
In verse a man may object to the foot system, but he
always has to make some substitute for it 1 some "accent-,"
or "stress-," or "bar-," or " section- "plan of distribution
to account for the manifestly organic character of his
subject. With prose, for obvious reasons, it is different.
Only an abject fool, or a bizarre and almost impossible
genius, 2 thinks that he may write verse comme bon lui
semble. But as everybody " speaks prose without know-
ing it," so, without being quite, a fool or at all a genius,
he may hold that there is nothing much to know about it
that its exercises are incapable of being reduced to
rule, and that when such demands as mere grammar or
perspicuity makes are complied with, there is no more to
be said.

Still, when any one of tolerable wits, and possessed of
ears in body and mind, condescends really to consider the
subject, he can hardly refuse to ^consider, or at least
rearrange, his ideas on it It is impossible that any such
person shall continue to see no difference between Sir
Thomas Browne and Conyers Middleton, between the
Authorised Version and the Revised, between Locke and
Berkeley, between Hooker or Donne and any twentieth-
century tub-thumper. And if he thinks a little longer

1 At the very moment when I was revising this proof, I happened to
receive a letter in which there occurred the words, " I do not scan by feet,
but by tune and time." No "retort" was necessary, for the remark (it had
nothing to do with this book, of the existence of which the writer was
ignorant) was well-wishing and quite uncontroversial. But "reply" was
easy. "As soon as you have done this, feet of one kind or another will
have appeared, inevitably, if without your knowing it."

2 Even Blake, who answers to this latter description as well as another,
did not think anything of the kind, and tells us so.

CONCLUSION 445

still, he will see that much, if not all, the difference
belongs, as far as expression, not thought, is concerned,
to this question of rhythm. Now rhythm requires, as a
condition of its existence, the difference which I designate
by the terms " long " and " short," and the values which
I so term are, by inexorable and inevitable mathematical
laws, grouped into the batches which I call " feet." And
this arrangement of groups is applicable, and has been
here applied, to the whole course of English prose.

The actual summary of the past application may be
given briefly, but should not, I think, be omitted here,
for the simple reason that I do not know where else it is
attainable. We saw that in the oldest the technical
" Old " or " Anglo-Saxon " stage, the tendency to regard
the rhythm of prose and that of verse as identical was
perhaps a little deceptive, but that both were actually, to
a very large extent, trochaic ; and that, in the more
ambitious exercises of prose, the writers seemed to have
little to rely upon, except the same instruments of accent
and alliteration which they would have used in verse.
But we saw, also, that both poetic rhythm and poetic
word-choice, especially the latter, could be discarded ; and
that a simple narrative style, not more cadenced than
conversation, could be and was produced.

In Middle English we saw that the necessary processes
of remoulding the language from an inflected, synthetic,
purely Teutonic dialect into an uninflected and analytic
tongue of mixed Teutonic and Romance, assisted by the
absence of any person of distinct genius in literature for
two or three centuries, delayed the formation of a definite
rhythm ; but that when this process of formation began
to draw to an end in the earlier fourteenth century, and
when, a little later, the absence of genius began to be
supplied, an almost entirely new range of rhythms, except
in the simplest narrative and conversation, began likewise to
be evolved. The disuse of inflection mitigated the trochaic
tyranny automatically ; the provision, by the Romance
admixture, of differently balanced and, on the whole,
more polysyllabic vocabulary, varied the new rhythm-

446 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

bases. We saw how, at last, people began consciously to
try writing " fairly " ; how devices for it were adopted, and
how, at the Renaissance, the critical literature of the older
Rhetoric, in which prose rhythm, and discussion of it, held
a large place, began to exert influence.

Finally finally, that is to say, as far as this stage of
it is concerned we saw how the two great kinds of
rhythmical arrangement, the balanced rhetorical anti-
phony on the one hand, and the long swelling complex
symphony on the other, were almost pitted against each
other by Lyly and Hooker. In the first of these writers
we have, beyond all possibility of question, a deliberate
attempt to make rhythm as well as other constituents of
style ; in the second, with however much or however
little deliberation, we have, equally beyond question, the
actual attainment of a style pre-eminently finished * in
rhythm. There is, indeed, a kind of cross-antithesis
between these two remarkable writers Hooker being
plain and quiet in respect of diction, grammatical arrange-
ment, rhetorical trick and ornament, to such a pitch that,
as we observed, some well-meaning persons have held
that he approaches the poor and the beggarly ; while
Lyly, going to the ends of the earth for his vocabulary,
and twisting his style into all sorts of figures, so contents
himself with the easiest and most rudimentary kind of
rhythm that other equally well-meaning persons have
scouted the classing of him as " ornate."

In the following century, however, and when plain
and ornate styles are now distinctly ranged against
each other, this reversal of characters ceases except in
Bacon himself, who has more of sixteenth than of seven-
teenth character, and is " mixed " in this as in the other
qualities of style. The plainer writers do, as a rule, keep
to plain antithetic or antiphonic rhythm ; the ornater do,
as a rule, adapt to their apples of gold the picture-frame
of silver, and marry the magnificence of their language
and imagery to symphonic and polyphonic harmony.

In the conflict, or at least the competition, of the two
styles we saw how, for long, remnants of the old musical

CONCLUSION 447

or rhetorical clangour clung even to plain styles like that
of Hobbes, and to half-French polished styles like that of
Temple, while it attained to the fullest possible symphony
and polyphony m Browne and Taylor and Milton. But
this music is killed by demands of business ; by the
intrusion of grammar-books ; and (to speak frankly) by
the ceasing, for a time, of the birth of musicians. The
" naked, natural way of writing " (as it seemed to itself)
which succeeded, sinks almost all rhythm but that of
parallel arrangement of more or less varying lengths,
where the ends only (and sometimes not even the ends)
had much of any rhythmical intention. But Dryden
shows how, by the idiosyncrasy and " fingering " of genius
rather than by any discoverable or analysable tricks of
composition, there could be got out of, or superimposed
upon, the nature and the nakedness, a subtle but astonish-
ing development of art and vesture. And the last two
or three sentences really supply an abbreviation of the
history of prose rhythm, as of prose style generally, from
1660 to 1800, or a little later. The tendency is always
downwards not always, though sometimes, to a more or
less vulgar, and often jerky conversation, as in L'Estrange,
and Collier, and Bentley, and the baser Mandeville but
always to the flatness and meanness of the Photian
observation l to the alignment of rhythmically soundless
or monotonous clauses with, at the best, a certain parallel-
ism to give them a kind of sound, if not of resonance.
And from time to time individual writers attempt dead-
lifts Addison with the undulations and end-crispings
of the milder, Swift with the clenching or crushing
mould of the stronger, irony ; Berkeley by perfecting, as
nobody but Plato and Malebranche had done before him,
the order natural to Logic and the more refined Rhetoric ;
Bolingbroke, by courting a showier and more " tricked and
frounced " sister of the rhetorical family. But always
style drops down again, to a nakedness which is not in the
least ashamed, and a something else which is not so much
the presence of nature as the absence of art.

1 V. supra, p. 229.

448 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

And then we come to the three Titans who set them-
selves it is difficult not to think in all cases deliberately
to the business of raising it for good, and who in a
certain sense succeed, their efforts in each case being very
mainly, if not in by far the greatest part, rhythmical.
There is Johnson who, without in his most characteristic
style in the regular " Johnsonese " going much beyond
balance and antithesis for instruments, varies the form and
application of these instruments almost prodigialiter ;
arranges his contrasts and correspondences in intricate
mosaics of triple or quadruple parallel group -effects ;
compels attention to the whole composition of these
mosaics (the neglect of which had been the great fault of
the plain style hitherto) by deliberately pitting adjective
against adjective, substantive against substantive, verb
against verb ; and swings the whole, in ponderous but hot
clumsy libration, against the reader's ear and mind at
once. 1 Burke takes the Bolingbrokian bladders, and fills
them, as smugglers of old are said to have done, not with
wind, but with spirit (with the wind of the spirit if any-
body likes), and once more compels, by his union of
imagery with sentiment and argument, the same continuous
attention to the whole flow of his phrase. While later
Gibbon, refusing or deserting mere balance, extends and
undulates it into something like the old sweep of Hooker,
and, in a manner hardly before practised since the middle
of the seventeenth century, connects the rhythm of his
sentences with that of his paragraphs.

And so there comes about less by the efforts or the
determination of any single one of these, than as a result
of two, even of all, of them, and of others back to Addison
and Dryden what has been called the " standard style "
in rhythm as in other things a style not aiming, except
in its deliberate " flights," and not aiming very full- or high
even then, at polyphonic effect in sentence, and symphonic
arrangement of sentences confining itself as a rule to

1 There is nothing that symbolises the true Johnsonian manner better to
my mind than the swing of the ram, with its stages and suspensions and
shielded engineers working it, in the old classical Companion -pictures.

CONCLUSION 449

decently adjusted balance but never, unless it is below
itself, inharmonious ; troubled about selection of seemly and
well-warranted language ; steering very carefully clear of
anything in the least suggesting poetry, but steering clear,
more carefully still, of cacophony, and vulgarity, and
flatness. This is the style which, for more than a hundred
years, has been affected by our best expositors and
arguers ; which, till Macaulay and Carlyle in their
different ways deserted it, was supposed to be especially
incumbent on historians ; which has sometimes been
called academic ; which is still aimed at by those who do
not aim at, or succumb to, special peculiarities, and which
is still successfully written by some persons, whose names
will very readily occur, without a mention which might
appear sycophantic to themselves and invidious to others.
The very full account which has been given, in the
last two chapters, of attempts during the last hundred
years to adapt this style to special purposes, and the
slight, but perhaps sufficient, notice of its degradations,
may excuse us from anything more than a paragraph
upon both here. It is sufficient to leave the degradations
alone ; and to say of the embellishments that they have, in
all cases, represented attempts to imbue and supersaturate
prose with rhythm ; to reintroduce, and if possible extend,
the endeavours of the seventeenth century at symphony
and polyphony. But, where they have been strictly
legitimate, they have always kept in mind that this
hyperdose of rhythm should stop rigidly short of con-
tinuous, complete, and definite metre. There may have
been more differences, in theory and in practice, on the
point whether, as the strictest theorists of old held, even a
formed fragment of metre is forbidden in prose ; or
whether, as the more liberal of those teachers allowed,
such fragments are quite legitimate and almost unavoid-
able, the only thing absolutely prohibited being con-
tinuous, undisguised, obtrusive, metrical run. Of the
work of the explorers I think they almost deserve the
title of conquistadores of this almost new prose-world
examples have been given and analysed, from the long

2 G

450 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

unknown experiments of Coleridge, who was born all but
a century and a half ago, to the achievements of Mr.
Swinburne and Mr. Meredith, who died but the other day.

There remains only the duty not to be shirked but
to be undertaken with anything but a light heart of
seeing whether we can generalise from this more than
millennium of particulars ; whether we can not merely, as
perhaps has been done to some extent, arrange a pano-
rama of what has happened, but can to any degree
systematise the happenings. 1

One great principle we can perhaps lay down, as
established beyond possibility of contradiction. It is not
new there is no doubt that the proper correction of the
famous saying of Pococurante Junior is " There is nothing
true except what is not new : and this matters very
much." But the principle has not been exactly pro-
claimed from the house-tops, and whether proclaimed or
not, it has been very little attended to, and never, to my
knowledge, worked out at all till the present occasion.
As the essence of verse-metre is its identity (at least in
equivalence] and recurrence, so the essence of prose-rhythm
lies in variety and divergence. As the identity of recur-
rence in verse is, in the best examples, tempered by an
equivalence which must be pretty exact, so the variety in
prose-rhythm is tempered, in the same sentence and in
different sentences, by a second principle of association
which will be further expounded shortly. As you
certainly will not produce the best verse by attempting,
like the eighteenth-century people, to make identity and
recurrence absolute, so you certainly will not secure the
best prose by simply turning out feet anyhow, only taking
care that no two or three following shall be the same.
We have occasionally noted and have left the fact,
indicated by scansion, to the apprehension of the intelligent
reader in a much larger number of cases that many of
the most attractive rhythm-groups in prose appear to be

1 I hope to give in Appendix III. a tabular synopsis of the chief
"findings" of this kind insisting, there as here, on their strictly provisional
character.

CONCLUSION 451

founded on a sort of foot -extension, and then foot-
retraction, of feet related to each other in composition or
cadence monosyllable, iamb, amphibrach, third paeon,
dochmiac dochmiac, paeon, amphibrach, trochee, with a
final monosyllable, or not, according to a provision which
corresponds to catalexis in verse. But we should probably
interpose some remarks on the feet themselves, a table
of which may be found elsewhere. 1

The dochmiac, or five-syllable foot, admitting a large
variety of changes, but seldom found with more than
two long syllables in it, 2 and often with one, I have
unhesitatingly admitted to a place in prose. In fact I
have been liberal (or licentious) enough to suggest that, in
certain kinds of prose, where the rhythm of the internal
parts of the clause is imperfectly marked, there might be
batches of even six syllables, where it would be difficult to
select more than one long enough to serve as the nucleus
or back-bone of a foot. But these instances occur very
rarely, if at all, in the highest kind of " numerous " art,
and there is always in them a sort of elision, synaloepha, or
slur. 3 But of the five-syllable foot in prose I have as
little doubt as I have room for it in verse. In some
cases, no doubt in many perhaps it may be split up into
a paeon and a monosyllabic foot, or into two syllables
and three. But, in a proportion which is not perhaps a
minority, the total rhythm, the legitimate rhetorical
current of the cadence, is not improved by this. The
dochmiac, in fact, like the paeon, but even more so, is one
of the great distinguishers of English prose- from English
verse-rhythm ; and one of the strongest arguments against
our modern stress-prosodists who make four- or five- or
six-syllable " bars " in verse, is that these tend (as indeed

1 P. xvi.

2 Because so much ballast in its hold would break it up. I have said
elsewhere that I do not quite know how the Greeks pronounced it in verse
(it is not absolutely certain that it was anything but a " book-made " foot
with them), and -we most assuredly could not get it in there. But it is easy
enough to take it in the more sesquipedalian stride of prose, and I think it a
distinct convenience here.

3 Indeed Thel wall's appoggiatura or " grace " syllable, an unnecessary
crime in verse, is not unthinkable, or wholly shocking, in prose.

452 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

they do in other ways also) to obliterate the " great
divide " between the two harmonies.

Advancing a little further, we find that the quadri-
syllabic feet, or some of them, play an exceedingly
important part in English prose. This importance, as to
the paeon had, as we saw, been noticed by Aristotle in
Greek ; and in English also I should hardly object to a
system which made it the " foot of all work " in prose.
Many of my own scansions admit quite cheerfully of
" coupling up " monosyllabic feet, or a trisyllabic and a
monosyllable, or two dissyllables, into paeons generally,
epitrites seldom but sometimes, and the rest of the quadri-
syllabic feet ] more or less frequently. But for the more
ornate and numerous prose, I may here repeat one of those
general observations which I have already often made in
the text and notes, to wit that the third paeon, especially
when, by the large commonness of English, the final
syllable manufactures something like an Ionic a minore, is
found, and found in a great, perhaps a predominant, portion
of those passages which aim at special harmonic effect.

In trisyllables it has been suggested that the amphi-
brach holds first place ; and I should not be averse to
seeing a fated and metaphysical connection with the
prominence of the paeon and the dochmiac, 2 in the very

1 Except the dispondee. Four long syllables would overweight a single
foot in English prose, as three (which are not too much here) do in English
verse. And, if they were found together, the inseparable emphasis would be
better attained by a molossus and a monosyllable, two separated spondees, or
(as is optionally possible to the number of five at the beginning of Sir
Thomas Browne's diploma-piece) monosyllables paused apart.

2 The " procession " of the relation of some of these may be pardonably
extra-illustrated in symbols here :

w w Amphibrach,
w w \j Third paeon,
w w w w Dochmiac.
The reader will see at once that many of these procession-groups may be

similarly constructed, as that of long syllable, iamb, anapaest -{ w (' or

{-v^v/j (ww-J

_> V, with endless others. In fact, if Guest's

Aldrichian suggestion of a formal arrangement a priori of all possible
" sections " for verse, to be tried on their merits, was rather horrid and slightly
futile ; a similar arrangement of these and other groups, to be actually experi-
mented on in prose, is not a merely Bedlamite notion.

CONCLUSION 453

fact that it is a foot, as I have also said, certainly to be
dispensed with in verse, and with great uncertainty to
be admitted anywhere, or in most places, there. But it
is not Turkishly-minded towards its brethren ; on the
contrary, it seems rather to like the assembling of them
together, round the throne where it sits as primus inter
pares. Every form of trisyllabic is, I believe, to be found
with us, the tribrach being, perhaps the rarest, though so
frequent in verse, because it has rather little substance for
prose, and is apt to take unto itself a syllable or dissyllable
of some strength, and become a paeon or dochmiac. So too
its opposite, the molossus, is not very common, though
(as not in verse) perfectly possible, and sometimes ex-
tremely effective. The others, dactyl and anapaest, cretic
and bacchic and anti-bacchic, are scattered everywhere.
In their variety, and in their want of exact (with a
presence of floating) equivalence, they lend themselves to
the general system of our prpse most happily.

Of the dissyllabics, the pyrrhic may seem to be even
more rare than in verse, and for the same reason (" only
more so ") which partially excluded the tribrach its want
of substance and its extreme tendency (like little sugar
bubbles in a cup of tea) to coalesce with or be sucked
into its greater neighbours. A purist who objected to
the six-syllable " sections " of the peculiar rhythm referred
to above might get rid of them, perhaps most easily, by
allowing pyrrhics. But, as has been remarked before, the
rhythmical tension of these passages is so low, or their
speed so high, that it hardly allows foot-marking of a very
definite kind. The others spondee, trochee, iamb are,
of course, ubiquitous. The singular deafness which could
deny, or the more singular asceticism which would
renounce, the spondee in English verse, will be more
hard put to it still in prose, and can pretend to effect its
purpose only at the cost of even more disastrous results.
As for the trochee, we have seen that it was once the
master of rhythm in prose as in verse ; and it has never,
to the present day, wholly lost its power, which is
specially great at the close of a sentence or rhythm-

454 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

group. 1 For the iamb, it is great in the same place, and
in the interior or beginning is as great or greater. But
it is rather as a temperer or admixture as what the
cooks call a liaison that it is most important, and,
when it is relied upon by itself, the dangerous Delilah of
blank verse is always at hand to trim the prose Samson's
locks.

Of the existence of the monosyllabic foot in English
prose I am as great a champion as I am of it in English
verse, and I think it is infinitely more prevalent. As
allowed above, it may sometimes be compounded with
trisyllables into a paeon, and with paeons or other fours
into a dochmiac. But in a very large number of cases,
and especially at the end, this would make a far feebler
and less effective cadence than the " bearing up " <of it
into a substantive foot, which becomes valuable, and
almost invaluable, as a strongly-marked pivot or stepping-
stone in the turn or progress of the rhythm. And after
all, we have so many monosyllables in the English
language that the least we can do for them is to give
them full status in this fashion.

Thus we have, for basis of calculation and partition in
prose rhythm, a body of feet, from one syllable to five at
least, admitting of arrangement to the number in all of
something like threescore individual combinations, and
providing, when combined with each other in the various
groups which we call clauses, sentences, and paragraphs,
a possibility of variety which is rather mathematically
than rhetorically infinite.

All this is, so far, a pretty solid road to walk upon.
But, at this point, are we not rather " on the brink of
Eternity," like the Major and the footman and Mr.
Titmarsh in Thackeray's frontispiece? Is it possible to
support, extend, and multiply those specimen -nints as to
combination of feet which were given above ? It may be ;
but I have repeatedly warned the reader not to expect
too much from the attempt.

1 For Mason's objection, based on mistaken dicta of the ancients, see
Appendix II.

CONCLUSION 455

In the first place, I must deprive myself of a weapon,
or instrument, or whatever it may prefer to be called, of
which the ancients availed themselves largely, and which
almost my chief predecessor, John Mason, 1 borrowed from
them without hesitation. I am totally unable to allow
in English, and I frankly admit inability to understand
even in Greek and Latin, the division of feet into sheep
and goats into "noble and generous" on the one side,
" base and weak " on the other. I have indeed admitted
a certain want of substance, for the purposes of English
prose, in feet consisting entirely of short syllables ; but
this is a quite different thing from marking-off, as Mason
does, not merely pyrrhic and tribrach, but trochee, dactyl,
amphibrach, and anti- (Mason calls it by its other name,
palim-) bacchic as " base," while iamb, spondee, anapaest,
cretic, bacchic, and molossus are made peers of the
rhythmic realm.

Of course the advantage or let us rather say the
object, for it seems to me a most dubious and treacherous
" advantage " of this is obvious. When you have patented
your " noble " numbers and branded your " base " ones, it
is quite clear that the more you use the first, and avoid
the second, the better will your combination be. If you
must use the rabble, stuff them into the interior of your
sentences ; begin with something distinguished and
(almost more carefully) end with the same. Back up a
pawn with a peer whenever you can, and so forth.
Certainly the apparent difficulty of the question is
marvellously lessened, in fact it may seem almost to vanish
bodily. But is there not, as far as English is concerned
(for, unlike some modern " scholars," I am not prepared
to dictate to Greeks and Romans about their own pro-
nunciation, grammar, and prosody), a rather big other
question begged somewhere ? Mason himself, a solid
commonsense John Bull, finds a few difficulties as how
to do away with the Dionysian epithet c-e/iz/o? for the
dactyl, or with Cicero's remarkable statement that numer-
ous prose non semper numero fit. I most certainly shall

1 V. Appendix II.

4$6 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

not admit any " baseness " in the amphibrach, after having
laboriously traced it, as a potent and effective ingredient
in the finest English prose, for three whole centuries. As
for that of the trochee, it is simply absurd. For age the
trochee bears the bell in English from every other foot ;
for softness and solemnity alike, for clangour and for
plangency, it has no superior in verse or prose ; and, as a
closing foot, it is perhaps present in an absolute majority
of our finest prose harmonies. The dactyl, " kittle " to
deal with in verse, and in fact better avoided, is often
highly effective in prose ; and though the antibacchic has
perhaps less " character " than any of the others, and is
indeed in English often indiscernible from the amphibrach,
there is no " baseness " of any kind about it, and it is not
even open, as the pyrrhic and tribrach are, to the charge
of a certain want of " body."

The office of the Promoter is more gracious than that
of the Devil's Advocate, and even if it were not, I have
not the slightest intention of exchanging to the latter in
reference to the so-called " generous " and " noble " feet.
To me all feet are beautiful alike, on the mountains of
verse and in the plains of prose, if they move themselves
delicately or vigorously but aright. I shall only comment
on the extreme arbitrariness of the preference of the
bacchic over its counterpart, merely on the more general
assumption that a foot which ends with a long syllable is
nobler than one which ends with a short. Perhaps my
sense of this arbitrariness, in English, is deepened by my
knowledge of the fact that, in English, and especially in
English prose, so many last syllables of feet (as instanced
above in the case of the third paeon) are common or
indifferent, that there is a real difference between our
language and the two great classical tongues in this
respect. And I confess that in what is perhaps the most
beautiful prose sentence ever written, the last of the
Platonic Apology, I always, in the teeth of accent and
quantity alike, feel inclined to lengthen the first syllable
of 6e& in order to get a nearer approach to trochaic
ending. Which is, no doubt, sinful ; but I am English,

CONCLUSION 457

and I hope it is permitted to me to hear as well as to
speak Englishly. 1

We shall therefore take, or rather I have already taken
throughout, the lesson of St. Peter on the housetop, and
scout the idea of any foot being common or unclean.
For the placing of them there must be many searchings
of heart and of mind. If I hope anything about this poor
book, it is that, on the facts given and the problems stated,
many such searchings, more profitable than my own in
result, may be made by others. As to one point, which
governs all, something may be said first. It may be
objected by some careful scrutineers that, after disallowing
Mr. Stevenson's criticism as to foot-making by word-
splitting, I have after all followed it, and have generally,
in the latter part of the book at any rate, refrained from
making feet end in the middle of a word. I have said
something about this before, but should probably say a
little here too. At the time when he made the criticism
referred to I was a mere novice and experimenter in this
matter. After twenty years of scattered and occasional,
and after two of continuous and systematic practice, I
have not altered my opinion that such division is perfectly
legitimate in all cases, in some decidedly to be preferred,
and in not a few perhaps necessary ; but that, if anybody
dislikes it, it can in the majority be avoided. One reason
for the avoidance, which I think I may say positively was
not present to Stevenson's mind, is that such avoidance
produces a new and valuable distinction from verse-
scansion, where the less foot-end and word-end coincide
unquestionably the better.

I have said, in more than one place, that the few
English dealers with this subject appear to me to have

1 After all, Plato often uses rd Belov as equivalent to 6 0e6s. Perhaps the
whole should, however familiar, be given, if only to consecrate the page with
its beauty : 'AXXi | y&p rfdrj \ upa \ airifrcu, \ tfiol JJLV \ diro6avov\/j.v(ji, \
v/j.Tv d | /Sioxro/i.^J'ots. | birbrepoi \ 8 i]fj.Civ \ Hpxovrai \ tirl &/J,eivov | irpa.yp.a., \
&di)\ot> | ira,vTi \ TrXriv el \ r<f def. The text is Professor Burnet's ; for myself
I think I like ir\i)i> 1) better. The scansion, while respecting Greek quantity,
carefully pretends only to give the foot-division most agreeable to the English
ear above spoken of. I do not know, and I doubt whether anybody knows
exactly, how Aristotle or Demetrius, Dionysius or Longinus, would have
scanned it.

458 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

bestowed, again no doubt in following of their classical
guides, disproportionate if not always exclusive attention
in the endings of sentences, adding sometimes, on the
same suggestion, a little in reference to the beginnings.
And we have seen that the practice of the eighteenth
century, to which they chiefly belonged, to some extent
justified (though in a way rather damning by implication)
this restricted attention. In fully developed prose-rhythm
" a beginning, a middle, and an end " are to be demanded
and respected as impartially as in an Aristotelian tragedy.
But there is also a natural tendency 'respicere finem ; and,
in the architecture of the paragraph more particularly,
these endings, as we have actually pointed out in many
cases, bear a part of dominant importance. The most
beautiful endings in English are trochaic or quasi-trochaic.
But the abrupter iambic or quasi-iambic close has a
strength and weight of its own, and an admixture of the
two is undoubtedly desirable in the formation of a perfect
paragraph the universal word-of-command and password,
" Variety," coming in here also.

The beginning is, in English, perhaps of somewhat less
general importance than it seems to have been in the
classical languages. By this I mean that it may lack a
very particular or striking character without much general
damage to the rhythmicality of what follows not by any
means that such character cannot, or cannot advantage-
ously, be imparted to it. The magnificence of the passage
from the Authorised Version of Isaiah, which has been so
fully examined and compared, would be much less than it
is if it were not so fully " set " and harbingered by the
opening blasts of the iamb " Arise ! " and the great mono-
syllable " Shine ! " supported on either side by its attendant
pauses, which give it almost the weight of a molossus.
That of the crowning sentence of the Urn Buri&l would
be impaired if the five blows on the coffin lid of " Now-
since-these-dead-bones " did not usher in the more com-
plicated symphony of the Dead March that follows. But
these are instances of exceptional tension and intention ;
and as a rule it is our English habit not to begin too

CONCLUSION 459

flourishingly or startlingly. For which reason I have paid
less attention than most people have done to De Quincey's
" Bishop of Beauvais " and to Pater's " The presence that
thus arose beside the waters," insinuating as is the direct
caress of its minor Ionic tone. 1

But, after all, the words of a not perhaps wholly illucid
or unhumorous critic of life in general may occur to us, in
regard to the particular point. This philosopher used to
say that, while it was the utterest commonplace of its
kind to exhort to the improvement of youth, and a trivi-
ality scarcely less trodden to dwell on the value of making
the most of age, hardly any one had taken as text the
fact that the years of man's life from thirty to fifty the
only period in which pleasure in enjoying and power to
enjoy walk hand in hand ; when a man's means are often
competent, and his calls on them not yet burdensome ;
when health of body and mind at once is fully reached
and not yet dissipated that such golden years are allowed
to pass in a hurry and huddle of so-called occupations
which, even when they are pleasant, as most things, work
and play, are then to the not decidedly unfortunate do
not allow themselves to be thoroughly savoured in the
present, and laid up carefully in memory for the future.
But as this preacher had not the pen of Solomon, or that
of Mr. Browning, he did not write a new Ecclesiastes or
Rabbi ben Ezra \ he only said, " Take care of your
middles? 2 And so I should say to a person ambitious to
write good numerous prose in English. It was the fault
of the early stages that they did not take care either of
beginning, or middle, or end ; it was the virtue of the great
sixteenth- or seventeenth-century writers that they took
equal care of all ; the fault of the succeeding school that
these " middles " were specially neglected ; and the glory of
the nineteenth-century restorers, from Coleridge onwards,
that they minded them.

1 Actually, of course, amphibrach, fourth pason, and dochmiac. But all
these have touches in various ways of the undulating method of the minor
Ionic, so often indicated as the most cajoling of all measures in English prose,
and they give the sequence noted at p. 452.

2 Dr. Johnson said nearly the same thing, but with a different application.

460 A HISTOR Y OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

But how to take this care ? that is the question the
rose on this rose-tree round which we constantly circle,
but from which Danger as constantly warns us off. Some
hints have been given ; a few more may be tried. Many
of them are simple enough applications, in different ways,
of the universal Law of Variety. A very obvious one,
which we have traced through centuries of time and
scores of examples, is the juxtaposition, in gradual
lengthening or shortening (the former is the more
common), of clauses constructed on a more or less similar
rhythm-scheme. This, as we saw, is very largely found
in the more elaborate prose of the eighteenth century,
and by no means absent from that of the nineteenth.
The fault of it is almost as obvious as its merit. It is
somewhat too mechanical ; and, like all things mechanical
without exception, is in danger of becoming monotonous.
It also creates a sort of stave effect, which, as elsewhere
observed, is especially to be avoided. But it has un-
doubted possibilities of charm, and perhaps even its
obviousness is not quite so great as it may seem to one
who has perceived the inwardness for himself, or has had
it pointed out to him. At any rate, it does not seem to
have been much dwelt on by ancient critics.

They, on the other hand, were fully aware of another
device which, indeed, could escape no one, even if he
were sitting down, in a vacuum of examples, to consider
the subject for the absolutely first time still less when he
had any considerable number of such examples before
him. And this is the mixture of short and long sentences
which is recommended to us in a great passage of
Dionysius. This, though it also may be said to be in a
manner mechanical, is not so to any extent that implies
monotony ; and, in greater or less degree, it has been
universally resorted to. Its dangers, however, are real,
though insidious ; and to see them when the snares have
been boldly stripped of their covering, we have only got
to turn to Macaulay, to Kinglake, and to many more
modern instances. Excessive contraction and letting
out, the constant sending forth giant and dwarf in

CONCLUSION 461

company, communicates the smatch of cheap epigram
the sound and the scent of the halfpenny or farthing
cracker. But it is, of course, purely the fault of the
author if he lets himself indulge unduly in these futile
and fatal fireworks ; and still more his fault if he allows
the indulgence to become a habit and an obsession. The
actual mingling of short sentence and long is almost an
indispensable resource for all styles, except those which,
like Hooker's, and to some extent Gibbon's, rely upon
long undulating sweeps, unbroken by any stop or flutter.
Even Sir Thomas Browne indulges in it ; and it is a
question whether some of the most apparently quietist
styles, such as Mr. Pater's, do not disguise its actual
presence by a different system of punctuation, so that
what would have been sentences become clauses merely.

Some allusions in what has just been said may point
us to a fresh path in the maze the way in which
rhythmical difference can be engineered by making the
closes of clause, sentence, and paragraph abrupt, complete,
or dying. While there is even a fourth way, of which, as
hinted above, Mr. Pater was almost the inventor, and
which effects a sort of compromise between the abrupt
and the dying by the employment of a gentle aposiopesis.
The abrupt form is, of course, that constantly employed
by Carlyle ; of the complete, examples may be found
anywhere in the proficients of the " standard " style, or
in those who diverge but little from it, as in Gibbon and
Macaulay earlier, Newman and Froude later. But these
two last and Mr. Pater (Mr. Swinburne prefers the com-
plete) also indulge to some extent in the " dying " close
the coda which, though in no way abrupt, and not even
giving the curious suggestion of a soft breaking-off which
we have called aposiopetic suggests to the mind's ear
ripples of further echo, potential if not actually audible
something corresponding to the " unheard melodies " of
the poet. Of these forms the abrupt and complete will
generally be embodied in an iambic or long monosyllabled
ending ; the others in the trochaic or short syllabled, at
least in some foot possessing a strong penultimate,

462 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

whether the actual last be long or short. And it need
hardly be said that by giving prominence to one or other
of these, or by varying them in admixture, almost infinite
further differences of rhythmical effect may be produced.

Yet another point that emerges is, that we cannot in
prose, as we can in verse, lay it down that juxtapositions
of particular feet are uniformly good or bad. We know
that, in English verse, the anapaest seeks out the iamb,
and the dactyl the trochee, as a companion or equivalent ;
while the substitution of dactyl for iamb, and anapaest
for trochee, with the consequent juxtaposition of the two
in each case, always, or almost always, leads to jangling
and jarring. But this is by no means the case in prose ;
and the reason is obvious enough, and, in fact, directly
connected with the general principle of prose -rhythm-
variety. The verse-unit is more or less fixed, the prose
is altogether fluid ; and even if actual juxtaposition of
two feet should, in itself, make an inharmonious com-
position, the feet that occur on either side of them will,
if the composer knows his business, undertake the task
of arranging a concordat, or an amicable separation, as
best may be. In many cases, too, it would be prosaically
possible, as it is not poetically, to rearrange the pair, so
as to make, for instance, not a dactyl and iamb, but
a long monosyllabic foot and a fourth paeon, in which
there is no incompatibility nor any suspicion of jar. The
looseness of the governing law of rhythm prevents the
dissension which would occur under the stricter union
of metre.

We may also observe, by legitimate inference, that,
for the finer prose, a pretty large admixture of the bigger
feet that is to say, the four- or five-syllabled units is
all but necessary. The very inadmissibility, according
at least to the system of prosody on which this book is
written, of such feet in verse, supplies at once that
differentia from verse which, on the same system, is the
absolute sine qua non of the best numerous prose. I
have arranged in my head, and could easily transfer to
paper, endless schemes of unbroken dissyllabic feet, and

CONCLUSION 463

I find that, though effective for a short time, the com-
position becomes extremely monotonous, and is even in
some danger of slipping into rough metre. While, if you
mix trisyllabics only, the Protean blank verse will, before
very long, draw you into its net. The danger can, of
course, be averted by seasoning largely with monosyllabic
feet ; but this is a merely colourable evasion, for these
monosyllables, plus the trisyllables, will simply and natur-
ally make paeons, while, when added to pairs of dissyllables,
they will make dochmiacs.

Lastly, there crops up a question, or more than one,
as to the effect produced, in prose rhythms, by what we
have sometimes called " pivotal " arrangements of the
same word or words the part played by epanaphora,
epanorthosis, and other forms of repetition generally.
We saw that devices of the kind formed a very large
part of the method of one distinguished prose-writer of
yesterday, Matthew Arnold ; but it was not found by the
present writer at any rate, whatever may be the case with
his readers, that the effect was wholly or permanently
delightful. In actual spoken oratory, or in very rhetorical
written passages, epanaphora may be effective ; but it is
too rough and boisterous an instrument for higher prose,
nor can the looser rhythm tame and train it as does the
stricter metre. And, once more, it and all forms of
repetition, down to the careless recurrence of a single
word except in a markedly different sense, without any
special rhythmical stress on it, are dangerous, because
they are in a manner rebel to the same great Law of
Variety. Epanaphora and similar forms of repetition are
good (when not abused) in verse, because they are in
accordance with its Law of Recurrence. They are bad
in prose for an exactly corresponding reason.

It may seem that this is an exceeding poor and
beggarly result of generalities from so long a history of
the subject, and so widely thrown a netting of examples.
But there is nothing against which, in course of some
thirty years' writing of literary history, I have learnt to
set my face more flintily than parade of systematic theory,

464 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

proceeding by elaborate rules and exceptions which for the
most part are really nothing but individual phenomena
catalogued and scheduled. I believe a most careful and
valuable German scholar not long ago elaborated a
settlement of the much -debated question, whether the
Anglo-Saxon stave is reducible to a fixed scheme of
accentual equivalence or not, by pointing out that it must
take one of (I think) ninety-two different forms and no
more. Such a result here would give me not the slightest
pleasure had I attained it. Even putting aside the certainty,
which my constitution of mind would impose upon me,
that somebody next day would discover a ninety-third ;
I should, even if the whole world were actually kind
enough to abstain from such a discovery, feel that there
was nothing to prevent its being made, and that my
ninety-two forms were forms in chalk, men in buckram.
I could not even have said to any of them as Mr. Carlyle
is said to have remarked to a young lady, " My dear,
ye're a nice phenomenon " ; for I should have felt that they
were, too possibly, not nice phenomena at all, nothing but
futile idols of an insignificant cave.

All that I have endeavoured to do has been to arrange,
for the first time, I believe, 1 a complete survey (according
to that foot system which until recently every one used,
and which I myself believe to be the only one of the
slightest use) of examples of actual English prose rhythm
from the earliest times to the present day, and to note,
where it was possible, advances and changes in the
proportion and character of the rhythm itself generally.

1 My friend Professor Bouton of the University of New York, who some
years ago put himself for a time, as a research student at the University of
Edinburgh, under my formal guidance, is, I believe, engaged upon a work
concerning prose style, not identical with this, though possibly touching it in
some points ; but I have as yet seen none of his book. He tells me, too, that
there have been scattered studies in America ; but how far these also may
coincide with my investigations I am again ignorant. I thought it better, in
the circumstances, to work as independently as possible, with the exception,
already often mentioned, of the classical pioneership of Hurd and Mason, and
of the experiments of my friend Professor Elton (see Preface), who will, I hope,
publish some results of the labours he relinquished as a whole. He most
kindly allowed me to see them, but, at my own request, after I had practically
finished. Our lines, I think, are pretty parallel.

CONCLUSION 465

Occasionally some general suggestions, inferences, and
even provisional axioms have cropped up, which I have
endeavoured to summarise in this Conclusion, and to
tabulate, more shortly and strikingly to the eye, in a
Third Appendix. But they are only put up and forward
as jury-masts or acting-officers ; though I do not take
quite such a gloomy view, of at least some of them, as Mr.
Midshipman Easy's poor friend, the master's mate, did of
his " acting " appointment.

For as, even in verse, I hold that except as to certain
abstract and almost mathematical forms which admit of
being filled up with wide variety the final decision must
always be left to the sensitive ear in each individual case,
so, and infinitely more so, in prose, where are no such
forms, or where at least the number of them is infinite,
and where Variety itself is mistress and queen the moon
that governs the waves of prose, as Order is the sun that
directs the orbit of verse the ear once more is judge.
" Not worth blotting fair paper, and wasting irrevocable
time, in coming to such a result as this ? " It is very
possible. But the work lay in my way ; and I found it ;
and I tried to do it with such might as I had.

2 H

APPENDICES

467

APPENDIX I

STAVE-PROSE POETRY OSSIAN, BLAKE, WHITMAN, ETC.

THREE or four years ago, in dealing with Blake's " Prophetic "
Books in the History of English Prosody^ a promise was made
which has been to some extent " implemented " (as they say in
my appointed place) by this book, as well as one of return to
the particular subjects specified at the head of this Appendix.
But it was even there observed that these subjects only partly
belonged to the History of Prose Rhythm, and they were dealt
with not very grudgingly in the earlier book. 2 The special and
continuous study of the prose division which the last two years
have enabled me to give has induced me to lay even greater
stress on that " partly " ; and I am now disposed to look upon
them as belonging to a Debateable Land which is much more
poetic than prosaic. I remember a great and greatly cadenced
sentence of Dean Hansel's itself a splendid example of what we
are studying in this book (v. sup. p. 417) which I never saw in
print, but heard from the preacher's lips some five and forty
years ago in the gallery of St. Mary's. "Alienated as man is
from God by sin, he is yet more alienated from the Devil by
humanity that humanity of which He partook who hath no
concord with Belial." And with no irreverence to the subject
of this sentence, which, as I have said, is ours by right of form,
I may borrow something of that form in saying that, alienated as
these media are from verse by their abstinence from strict metre,
they are yet more alienated from prose proper by their constant
observance of a definite "stave-end," entirely different in
character from the closes of clauses and sentences, and making
as it were a paragraph of every versicle.

This applies in some, but in a much less, degree to great

1 Hist. Pros. iii. 20.

2 Ibid, and in the context there ; in the special Excursus on Ossian (iii. 43) ;
and in the chapter on " American Poets " (iii. 490-492).

469

470 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

parts of the Authorised Version. Except in the Books which
are definitely lyrical, and sometimes even there, paragraphing is
possible, though the fact that it has been adopted by the
Revisers is enough to show that it is not an improvement. But
to paragraph Blake is impossible ; there is the sharpest differ-
ence between the actual prose and the quasi - verse parts of
the " Prophecies " themselves. If you paragraph Ossian, the
frequent indulgences or slips of actual metre which were traced
in the other handling, will become more obvious and uglier than
ever; while the turgid poetic diction, and the misty gropings
of its sense, will lose a great deal by the obliteration of the
staves. As for Whitman, the " catalogues," questionable at the
best, will take on even more of pure burlesque than they have
at present ; the sometimes very artful variations from short to
long will lose much of their strikingness and beauty ; and the
great charm of the medium the occasional exquisiteness
of the separate versicles or paragraphidia will be blurred
and blunted.

It seems to me, therefore, that a very few observations here
will be sufficient for the division ; and we may include in them,
without special reference, all or most of the writing that may be
put in the same class from the ineffably dreary Ossizmc pastiches
of the eighteenth century to our latest playings at Blakish and
Whitmanese.

It can hardly be necessary to repeat the demonstrations,
given in the History of Prosody, that Ossz'an, at least, was an
attempt much rather at a new kind of verse than at a special kind
of prose, and that this attempt proceeded, to a very large extent,
by the rather schoolboy process of " unrhyming " and stowing
away fragments and lumps of actual metre in the pudding. To
me, at least, it is practically certain that one of the main causes
of this attempt, as well as of its popularity, was the violent if
unconscious nisus to get at something better than something
at least different from what Blake not so long after was to
denounce in his own case, and Cowper to describe with
characters of mild damnation in his the " monotonous
cadence," the "mechanic art," of the Popian couplet. The
innocent, if somewhat bewigged and befogged, praises of my
professorial ancestor, Blair, are entirely devoted to the considera-
tion of Ossian as a new sort of poetry. The imitators and
admirers English and German and French all jumped at it
as that and nothing else. There may have been eighteenth-
century persons who looked upon it as a debauch in verse ; but
I am quite certain that there can have been hardly any who
would not have looked on it as pure lunacy if he had considered

APPENDIX I 471

it as prose. Nor is it. It may, if any one likes, be regarded as
a hybrid between the two; but the difference between it, and
even the most elaborate numerous prose proper of the seven-
teenth or the nineteenth century, is infinitely greater than that
between it, and the least accomplished verse of Addison's little
senate at the beginning of its own period, or the twitterings of
the Delia Cruscans at the close thereof.

With Blake the gulf deepens ; and indeed that description of
his, which has just been referred to, puts the matter out of
question. He was not aiming at prose at all, but at vers libres
" poetry [not] fettered " something more suitable, both in its
freedom and in its complexity, for his mysterious matter. In
Ossian we have been able to discover large quantities of scarcely
buried metre. The feet kick more than convulsively with a
gentle even motion which is that of quite comfortable life
through the thin shroud of typographic arrangement. But in
Blake there is the hum of a quasi-metrical accompaniment all
round the composition ; we practically never get anything more
tuneless than recitative ; we are able constantly (and it has been
done in the History of Prosody) to refer the measure, now to
loosened and lengthened blank verse, now to Alexandrines or
fourteeners treated in the same kind of way ; now to irregular
but quite perceptible anapaestics. An exceedingly hasty or
untrained judgment may feel inclined to say, " Oh ! this is not
verse, so it must be prose." Persons less related to the
Headlong ap Headlong will probably take refuge in a safer
enthymeme. " Although this is extremely uncovenanted verse,
it is not safe to call it prose, because there are none of the signs
thereof."

The case of Whitman is not quite so much to be judged off-
hand, but it is clear enough. His individual staves versicles,
paragraphidia as we ventured to call them, or anything else that
anybody likes are, by themselves and individually, in by far the
larger number of cases indeed, always (except now and then
when something like a definite note of warning is usually
sounded) prose pure enough. They are often very beautiful
prose, worthy of the most careful scansion and appreciation
such as has been given in this book. But, as I have already
hinted, when they are taken together, when you at once regard
for purposes of observation, and analyse for purposes of experi-
ment, their system of juxtaposition, then you perceive that
something more than prose that something different from
prose has been aimed at certainly ; that it has (in measure
differing no doubt according to the taste of the appreciator)
been achieved. And this something, the division namely of the

472 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

portions from each other, and their arrangement en Ichelon, and
not in line or phalanx, at once puts them aside. The items
could receive criticism according to the general principles of
the book. The whole escapes us; and whether Prosody will
receive it as a subject is out of our concern. 1

1 As I have mentioned Whitman, it may be asked why no other American prose-
writers appear. Their absence is not due to any incivility, and it is not wholly
due to the desirableness of economising space. The reason is that, interesting
as it might be to deal, say, with Emerson and Poe from our point of view, we
should not find much, if anything, in them that gave us new observations.
Emerson is practically represented by Carlyle ; Poe at his best by De Quincey
and even Landor ; at his not-best by Charlotte Bronte. They have, as it were,
their English " correspondents," and do business here by them.

APPENDIX II

MASON ON PROSAIC NUMBERS

I HAVE referred several times in the text to the remarkable
observations of John Mason, a Nonconformist minister of the
middle of the eighteenth century, on the subject of this book ;
and though I have not given much space, for reasons of various
kinds, to the scanty preceptist literature of that subject, I must
make an exception in his case. Whether the tract l is actually
" rare " in the technical sense I cannot say. I can only say
that, when I first saw it in a catalogue some fifteen or sixteen
years ago, I had never seen it even referred to before ; that I
have very seldom, if ever, seen a copy catalogued since ; that
except Mr. Omond, nobody that I ever met seemed to know it
till they heard of it from me ; and that several of my friends
have found it impossible to procure. I think this justifies the
small trouble I am going to take in giving a brief abstract of it ;
and I shall not repent though (as once occurred in another case)
somebody should start up and say that he had twenty copies
offered him by twenty different booksellers in twenty successive
days or words to that effect.

The pamphlet is a short one of xii-y6 pages in octavo, the
print, except in the notes, being of a good large size and fairly
"leaded." The Preface has a pleasant eighteenth - century
ceremony and rotundity, regretting that "our modern Rhetoricians
should lay so little stress upon a Thing which the antient

1 An Essay on the Power and Harmony of Prosaic Numbers, being a Sequel to
one on the Power of Numbers and the Principles of Harmony in Poetic Composi-
tions (London : Printed by James Waugh for M. Cooper at the Globe in
Paternoster Row, MDCCXLIX). The companion Essay appeared with the same
imprint in the same year. A shorter and very practical Essay on Elocution,
bound up with my copies of the others, and signed by John Mason, A.M., had
reached its fourth edition in 1757, the date of this copy. The author (who, like
most of his cloth at the time, was a private tutor and chaplain as well as a
minister) lived from 1706 to 1763, and was grandson of a better known John
Mason, an Anglican divine and hymn-writer, but an enthusiastic Millenarian and
apparently a very decided " crank." Our J. M. is common-sense or nothing.

473

474 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

Orators considered as so important," and quoting at length that
remarkable person, James Geddes, who had so great an influence
on contemporary philologists in the older and better sense. The
text has ten chapters ; and throughout, the " Numbers " of the
title are translated into the adjective " numerous " applied to
prose. The first chapter is occupied by a brief sketch of what
the " antients " have said, and citations in opposition to the
neglect of the modern rhetoricians from Pemberton, 1 from the
Fitzosborne's Letters of that Melmoth who also translated Pliny,
and was reduced by Johnson " to whistle," 2 and from " Longinus "
Smith, who, however, took the other side.

The second contains that enumeration and classification of feet
as " noble " or " base " which has been referred to, discussed, and
disapproved above. Then, in Chapter III. he proceeds to explain
how the different disposition or combination of these numbers is
that which constitutes the difference between a rough and a
smooth style admitting, however, that a "rough, masculine,
and vehement style " may be " numerous." He is still rather in
the bondage of "generosity" and "baseness," and I am afraid
his instance, as he uses it, is a fallacy of non causa pro causa. He
rightly objects to : " It is a mystery which we firmly believe the
truth of and humbly adore the depth of," and rightly prefers
" the truth of which we firmly believe, and the depth of which
we humbly adore." But the badness of the first form does not,
as he thinks, come from the " base and feeble " trochees, or the
goodness of the second from its " strong and generous " iambs
and anapaests. It comes from the facts, first, that the postponing
of the proposition, though a sound English idiom, 3 is a some-
what conversational and undignified one, and that "truth of,"
and " depth of," have a homceoteleuton of a kind particularly to
be avoided in prose.

The fourth chapter (wrongly duplicated as "III." in the
original) describes, taking Dionysius as guide, 4 the manner of
" reducing " prosaic numbers ; that is to say, of arranging them
according to feet. It is curious, however, that while indulging
in most unnecessary argument as to the propriety of using tri-
syllabic as well as dissyllabic feet, he seems to " shy at " tetra-
syllabic, though his ancient authorities constantly use them.
Thus, in scanning the opening passage of Genesis, he goes out of

1 V. Hist. Pros. ii. 544.

2 V. Boswell, Globe edition, p. 520.

3 (Mason, wiser than some of our modern grammar- book makers, partially
acknowledges this. )

4 Mason re-analyses the ancient analysis in a manner which is shrewd in itself,
and which I should have liked to follow, but for the reasons given sup. at
Chap. I. p. 9.

APPENDIX II 475

his way to make (and apologise for) a dactyl and spondee.
" In the be | ginning | " is a shockingly bad beginning itself; " In |

the beginning | " or " In the | beginning | " being obviously the
right way.

Chapter V. is devoted to closes ; and poor Mason is much
disturbed by his authorities' commendations of a ditrochaic
ending. For if a trochee is base and weak, surely a double
trochee must be doubly weak and base a sort of Debilitado
Doblado to adapt Thackeray. But he gets off rather lamely
by the help of the " commonness " of an end-syllable. VI.
and VII. deal respectively with " Poetic Prose " (too near to
metre) and " Prosaic poetry " (i.e. the parallelisms of Hebrew
literature or the set fragments of inscriptions). Under this head,
if he had been writing a few years later, Mason would no doubt
have classed Ossian. Chapter VIII. is a long one for the book,
consisting chiefly of extracts, fully scanned, from Sharp, Tillotson,
Addison, Atterbury, Temple, and others, ending with the
overture of the Gospel of St. John, which, however, he spoils

with two initial dactyls " In the be | ginning was " in the teeth
both of his own principles and of manifest rhythmical require-
ments. 1 IX. contains "rules." As I find that criticism, how-
ever politely worded, is sometimes misunderstood, I shall simply
reprint them, at full or in summary, with no further remark than
that some of them seem to be unhappy, and a few not very
relevant. X. ceremoniously perorates with a neat eulogium of
" numerous " prose generally.

The " rules " are as follows : 2

I. " Furnish yourself with a copia of equivalent words that
convey just the same idea ; that you may have it in your power
to substitute one of a good number in the room of another that
is a bad one, and to choose that which best suits the rhythmus,
of which a good ear will soon be judge."

II. " When four, five, or more short syllables come together,
you may part them by inserting amongst them some expletive
particle containing a long quantity, which, if it do not strengthen
the sense, will at least serve to meliorate the measure."

III. "An illipsis \sic\ will often help the rhythmus by con-

1 Just compare this sing-song with the majestic, " In | the beginning | was

the Word " ! | It is observable that he actually robs himself, and his author, of
his own ' ' strong and generous ' ' anapaest.

2 Those between marks of quotation are quoted exactly ; the others shortened
to their gist. The "general" additions have been less respected, and are all
shortened, although " quoted."

476 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

tracting two syllables into one as "tis,' 'don't.'" He extends
this to the omission of words or part-clauses.

IV. " A proper use of rhetorical figures " is recommended,
but largely suhuled.

V. " Transposition of words " is suggested.

VI. Not merely a "good number," but an "emphatic word"
is required at the close.

VII. "Remark the most beautiful closes as well as the
tenderest words " in others.

VIII. " Let your first care be a clear and strong expression
of the sentiment."

IX. " Do not always use the same sort of numbers, be they
ever so good."

X. " Let your composition be so free, natural, and easy, that
you may not seem to have any regard to your numbers at all." 1

He adds a few which he calls "rules of a more general
nature," though one might be inclined to call them more
peculiar : " Don't have two long sentences together though you
may have many short"; "Keep similarly -sounding words far
apart "; " Avoid strings of genitives with 'of'"; " Use alliteration
now and then"; "Be careful of 'w,' 's,' 'th,' etc."; "Avoid,
but not entirely, the frequent postponement of the proposition " ;
and " Don't let the beginning of a word duplicate the end sound
of the last."

Most of these are extremely sound ; others perhaps less so ;
all perhaps (except II. and IX.), a little rudimentary as regards
"numbers."

If, however, I were to exercise a pen (which has, perhaps,
had some practice of the kind) in pulling Mason to pieces as I
have neither wish to do nor care for doing I should only break
its nib against the impregnable fact that he was the first, and
until very recent times practically the only, critic to attack this
subject in English with any fulness and on any system. He was
actually a teacher of elocution ; and as he was no doubt led by
this to the consideration of our subject, we may readily excuse
any dictum which may perhaps savour more of the actor or the
vjroK/om?s than of the critic pure and simple. I rather doubt
myself whether the very finest and most elaborate prose is not
better read than heard; for while Dryden was absolutely
right in asking why we should consider the mind of man less
active than his senses, we may justly intensify the question
by retorsion, and ask whether the senses are not actually less
active and sensitive than the mind. But this is a by-problem.
There is no doubt that style which is intended to be heard
1 All these rules are more or less largely explained, illustrated, and commented.

APPENDIX II 477

has a tendency to exaggerate emphasis, and to avoid intricate
rhythms.

But however this may be, it was a great thing to face the
idleness which would not consider these questions, and the
tritical commonplaces as to their being trivial, finicking, un-
English, and so on. If he might have done more, he did much ;
and it is evidence of that stirring of the waters which was going
on, that in the very hey-day of the " drab " style at the very
moment of the floruit of Conyers Middleton a humble dissent-
ing minister should be setting men in the path in which, eighty,
and a hundred, and a hundred and thirty years later, De Quincey
and Landor, and Newman and Ruskin, and Pater were to tread. 1

1 It will, perhaps, be only proper, especially in face of that interesting essay
of Mr. Shelly's, to which I have before referred, to connect the latest with the
first student of Latin and English prose rhythm combined, and to say a very little
more about the Ciceronian and cursus systems of Latin prose scansion, which Mr.
Shelly has endeavoured to adapt to the cadences of the English Prayer- Book.
They have recently, in Germany (see Mr. Clark's book (note, p. 9) and the
authorities there mentioned), endeavoured to systematise Cicero, and to show
that his own admittedly ' ' desultory " theory of clauses and clause endings may
be thrown into three forms

(1) -----

(2)

(3) -------

( = cretic or molossus + trochaic endings of this or that kind, with others to be
brought under these by the same classification a outrance, which makes ninety
odd forms of Anglo-Saxon verse). It is again a known fact that when
accentual quantification succeeded, forms answering to these were definitely
practised and prescribed in the Middle Ages, under the names of cursus flanus,
tardus, and velox. A "law" has been also extracted from these by Herr
Meyer, according to which there must be two, three, or four unaccented
syllables before the last accented one in a sentence. I must not steal Mr.
Shelly's applications of this to English ; but merely observe that "I do not
agree with Paulus" ; though I hope he will continue his enquiries. I do not,
for instance, think that " Rfse to the life immortal" is in the slightest degree
sufficient for an English scansion ; even of the accentual kind. ' ' Life ' ' cannot
be slurred in such a fashion. And I ought to add that Mr. Shelly himself
admits it to be "often impossible to adopt" the cursus rhythm "owing to the
character of the English language." / should, though he does not, exclude
"many and great dangers" from any resemblance to esse videatur, because

of the insurgence of "great." And if weight is to be laid on mere trochaic
endings, it is to Old English, not to Latin, that we must go.

APPENDIX III

TABLE OF AXIOMS, INFERENCES, AND SUGGESTIONS

(It is here most earnestly reiterated that the following propositions are strictly
provisional, and presented only as thoughts that have cropped up in the
course of the survey of facts given in the text. For Table of Feet,
v. sup. p. 16. )

1. The Rhythm of Prose, like the Metre of Verse, can, in
English as well as in the classical languages, be best expressed
by applying the foot-system, or system of mathematical com-
binations of " long " and " short " syllables.

2. But a much larger number of these combinations, to be
ascertained (as in the other case) only by practice, are available
here, including those of four or five syllables.

3. The great principle of foot arrangement in prose, and of
Prose Rhythm, is Variety.

4. No foot is in itself " nobler " or " baser " (i.e. better or
worse for prose purposes) than another; though feet consisting
exclusively of short syllables are somewhat rare, and have a
tendency to coalesce with, and merge into, longer and heavier
ones.

5. Feet retain in prose their intrinsic character, i.e. the iamb
gives a " rising," and the trochee a " falling " effect, the
amphibrach and the Ionic a minore, or third paeon, an undulating
or rocking movement, etc.

6. But the necessity, or at any rate the great desirability, of
variation in foot - arrangement somewhat interferes with the
extension of these effects to rhythm -groups which, if mainly
composed of one foot, would become too much like verse.

7. It is possible that, especially in certain kinds of prose of low
tension, blocks of even six syllables may, by the help of some-
thing like slur, assume the position of feet.

478

APPENDIX III 479

8. The scansion of prose by these feet often, if not generally,
approaches that rhetorical or musical arrangement of verse
which has been noticed elsewhere. 1 But in this case there is
no other.

9. There is no objection to the falling of a foot-end in the
middle of a word. But it is less frequent in prose than in verse ;
and its comparative rarity perhaps furnishes one of the differences
between prose- and verse-rhythm.

10. A still more important difference is that in prose, except
at the paragraph-end, there should be nothing corresponding
to the line-break in verse. Closed staves of any kind, as in
Ossian, etc., always incline to the poetical. The clause- and
sentence-break is one chiefly of sense.

11. Monosyllabic feet are of extreme importance as pivots for
the turn, and stepping-stones in the progress, of English prose
rhythm.

12. And this peculiarity, which distinguishes English from the
classical languages, is perhaps connected in some way with the
great number of English monosyllabic words.

13. In fully "numerous" prose as much care should be
taken of the feet in the middle of a clause or rhythm-group as
of those at the beginning and end.

14. The beginning is often the least prominent part in
English, though it may (as shown by some examples in the
text) be of great importance in summoning special attention.

1 5. Neglect of the middle will infallibly deprive the structure
of all claim to be really " numerous." A mere " filling " of
undistinguished rhythm, between an emphatic beginning and end,
is French rather than English, oratorical rather than literary,
and always indicative of a low type with us.

1 6. Such superior importance as belongs to the ends is one
rather of connection with other ends, clause- or sentence-, in
regard to the total rhythm of the sentence or paragraph, than
intrinsic or peculiar.

17. These ends may be abrupt, complete, or dying, emphatic
or gliding off.

1 8. In some cases there appears to be something in them

1 In several passages (e.g. iii. 526 note) of Hist. Pros., and more specially
and explicitly Historical Manual, 35, 36, and 268, 269.

480 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

corresponding to catakxis in verse the following pause supply-
ing what is wanted.

1 9. But Variety, in the composition of the feet which compose
these ends, is of special and paramount importance.

20. Not seldom, it seems as if gradation in such successive
end-feet e.g. anapaest, iamb, long syllable were especially
powerful and grateful.

21. This principle of Gradation which is connected with
the more general one of Variety seems indeed to offer (subject
to the cautions given) a key to several locks.

22. It appears constantly in respect of sequences of feet
in a clause dochmiac, pseon, a trisyllable, and so on and
perhaps very specially in the concluding feet of one anapaest,
iamb, long syllable, etc.

23. The gradation may be either way from longer to shorter,
or from shorter to longer.

24. But something similar is often noticed in the larger
units. Sentences and clauses follow in succession to each other,
drawing themselves out, or shutting themselves up, like slides
of a telescope, and presenting a profile like a flight of steps
ascending or descending.

25. These arrangements are specially prominent in what is
called the Balanced style ; in which pairs or batches of clauses
and sentences are aligned or opposed to each other, with an
antithetic and even antiphonic effect.

26. But they are often noticeable also in the symphonic
and polyphonic style, where the rhythm is rather continuous than
antiphonally arranged, and which supplies, perhaps, the best
examples of " numerous " prose.

27. It is, however, possible to combine the two as Mr.
Swinburne, more particularly, has shown.

28. Verses or parts of verses, which present themselves to
the ear as such, are strictly to be avoided in prose ; but s"uch as
break themselves into prose adjustments are permissible, and
even strengthen and sweeten the " numerous " character very
much.

29. In Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, the rhythm is mainly
trochaic.

APPENDIX III 481

30. But in Middle English the iambic rhythm of Latin and
French invades, and coalesces with, the trochee, though never
suppressing or ousting it.

31. In closes, especially, trochaic or amphibrachic endings
are very frequent, and exceedingly effective, in the best English
prose to the present day. 1

32. This mixture of iambic and trochaic general cadence
begets the longer feet, and so the more varied cadences which
they bring with them.

33. The amphibrach itself, rare in verse, would certainly
appear to be an exceedingly prevalent foot in English prose.

34. Three trisyllabics amphibrach, bacchic or anti-bacchic,
and anapaest seem in many cases to combine with special
harmony.

3 5. Each of these is also good singly, especially the anapaest,
which perhaps ranks next to the amphibrach as a prose foot of
three syllables. The cretic occurs, but not eminently.

36. The molossus, another exile from verse according to the
present writer, is quite at home in prose ; though it may some-
times, with advantage, be resolved into its constituent three long
monosyllables.

37. The tribrach is perhaps sometimes found, but it shares
with the pyrrhic, and still more with the proceleusmatic, the
disability referred to in Rule 4, sup.

38. The dactyl is common enough ; indeed the large number
of dactylic words in English, and the frequency with which, in
prose, foot- and word-length coincide, force its entrance.

39. But it seldom combines well with a spondee or trochee
after it. The '''hexameter ending" in verse and prose alike, is
repugnant to English.

40. In harmonious passages, especially of an emotional kind,
a foot, which may be in most cases either Ionic a minore or third
paeon, is present so frequently that it seems to be almost a
specific.

41. Other paeons are very common, but seem to have less of
a special effect than this.

1 In this way the influence of Anglo-Saxon verse on English prose (v. sup.
p. 10, note) may be thought to be specially probable.

2 I

482 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

42. Epitrites are not uncommon, though more so than
paeons. They share to some extent, as do the major Ionic, the
choriamb and antispast, and the double feet, a tendency to break
up and recombine. But (except the dispondee, which would
certainly undergo this) all are possible and not very infrequently
probable.

43. The dochmiac, in many of its numerous combinations, is
one of the commonest and most useful feet in English prose.
In the more accomplished specimens of the last three centuries
it would often be impossible to get a satisfactory scansion if it
were disallowed.

INDEX

483

2 I 2

INDEX

Addison, 230, 232, 243-252, 256, 260,

261, 267, 271, 289, 290, 337, 350,

362, 447
ALlhic, 23, 25, 26, 30-36, 39, 42, 72,

104-105, 115, 162, 218, 219

Bata, 30

Alexander, Patrick, 367
Alfred, King, 23-25, 66, 104
Amadis translations, 116 note
Anatomy of Melancholy, The, 165-168
Ancren Riwle, The, 44-51, 54, 102,

220

Andreas, 28, 29
Andrewes, Bishop, 158
Anima Poetae, 295, 300-305
Apollonius of Tyre, 38-40, 104, 106,

109, 219
Apology for Poetry, Sidney's, 139

the Miltonic, 170, 171

the Platonic, 456, 457 note

Arbuthnot, 252, 271
Arcadia, the, 116 note, 139
Aristotle, chap. i. passim, 14 note,

104 note, 118, 147, 224, 232, 244,

392 note
Arnold, M. , 297, 400 note, 412-416,

423, 440, 463

Arthur of Little Britain, 93
Ascham, 81, 92, 116, 119-122, 134,

204, 205, 220, 221, 223, 271

Astrolabe, Chaucer's, 66, 71, 72

Atterbury, 252

" Aureation," in sq.

Austen, Miss, 251, 376

"Authorised Version," the, 73 note,

116, 142-158

Autobiography, De Quincey's, 320 sq.
Ayenbite of Inwyt, The, 53

Babington, Dr. Ch. , 76 note

Bacon, 132, 158, 163-165, aoo, 205,

446

Bain, Professor, 405
Balzac, 271
Baudelaire, C. , v, 429

Beaconsfield, Lord, 378-380

Beccaria, ix

Bentley, 157 note, 239, 240

Beowulf, 10, 27, 28

Berkeley, 252-254, 256, 267, 350, 447

Bernard, St., 54

Berners, 75, 82, 92-97, no, 115, 164

Besant, Sir W. , 82

" Bishops' " Bible, the, 149 sq.

Bispel, An, 52

Blackmore, R. D. , 441

Blake, 31, 66, 343, 392 note, 405,

444 note, App. I.
Blickling Homilies, The, 15, 25-29,

IO2

Boethius, 24-25, 66, 72-75
Bolingbroke, 256-259, 273, 374, 380,

447

Bonar, Mr., 271

Bouton, Professor, 464 note

Breton, N. , ix

Brontes, the, 405-408

Brown, Tom, 238, 239

Browne, Sir T. , 42, 101, 105, 133,
159, 162, 181-200, 223, 237, 239,
252, 267, 280, 294, 325, 358, 362,

423. 447

Bunyan, 39, 88, 105, 127, 239
Burke, 42, 127, 272-281, 285, 288,

290, 291, 294, 299, 324, 337, 357,

374. 380, 448

Burnet, T. , 163, 200, 223, 321
Burton, R., 165-168, 204, 364
Butler, Joseph, 263
Byron, 297

Campbell (the poet), 82, 113, 298

, Dr. George, 255

Capella, Martianus, 15

Capgrave, 76, 80

Carlyle, 285, 292 note, 349, 350, 364-

370, 399, 402, 428, 461, 464
Castellain, M. , 205
Catholicon Anglicum, in
Caxton, 81, 82, 103, 115, 217

485

486 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

Chalmers, Dr., 357, 358
Chambers, Mr. E K. , 254, 255
Chaucer, 24-25, 39, 55, 57, 66, 75,

103, 108, 109, 117, 122 note, 217
Cheke, Sir John, 116-118
Chesterfield, 242 note, 259
Christian Morals, 198-200
Chronicle, The Anglo-Saxon, 16 note,

37, 40, 51, 104, 106
Church Quarterly Review, The, 9 note
Cicero, 4-6, 9 note, 224, 244, 246, 257
Clarendon, 166, 179, 204, 214-216
Clark, Mr. A. C., 9 note, 133 note,

477 note

Cobbett, 105, 127, 271
Cockayne, T. O., 31 note, 41 note
Coeur de Lion, Richard, 56 note
Coleridge, Mr. Ernest, 295, 300
, S. T., 42 note, 166, 182, 281,

311 note, 321, 341, 353-355- 359
Collier, Jeremy, 239, 240
Colloquy, ^Ifric's, 30, 31
Colvin, Sir Sidney, 326 note
Complete Angler, The, 216 note
Coquillart, 112 note
Cornwall, John, 57
Courthope, Mr., 248
Coventry, 228

Coverdale, 116 note, 125, 149 sq.
Cowley, 230, 231
Cowper, 80, 214
Coxe, L. , 115
Craik, Sir H. (his English Prose

Selections, notes passim), ix, 257, 267-

271. 349. 357

Cranmer, 116 note, 125, 126
" Cursus," the, 9 note, 477 note
" Cynewulf, The Slaying of," 16-23,

(the poet), 28, 29

Cypress Grove, The, 200

Dante, 20, 154, 341

Defoe, 39, 88, 105, 127, 240, 241

De Interpretatione, 2 note

Demetrius, 2 note, 3, 4

De Quincey, v, n note, 42, 176, 186

note, 260, 273 note, 295, 305-21,

33, 33 1 . 35. 354 note, 391-3, 406,

425, 434 note, 436
Dialogues, Pope Gregory's, 38 note
Dickens, 380-382

Dictionaries, Early English-Latin, in
Diderot, ix
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2 note, 4,

176 note, 222, 314, 396
Discoveries, Ben Jonson's, 204-208
Donne, 101, 133, 159, 162, 163, 223,

237. 325. 417. 423
' ' Douay " Bible, the, 149 sq.

Dowden, Bishop, 125 note

Dream-Fugue, De Quincey's, 310 sq.

Dream of Boccaccio, 330

of Euthymedes, 330

Dreams, their influence, 311 sq.

Drummond of Hawthornden, 200, 204

Dryden, 33 note, 41, 228-233, 241,
244, 248, 252, 256, 260, 267, 272,
289-292, 325, 341, 352, 355, 423,
425. 447

Earle, Professor, n, and chap. ii.

passim, 44, 55, 75, 291
Ecclesiastical Polity, 134-138
"Eliot, George," 408-409
Elton, Professor, ix note, 464 note
Emerson, 472
Epicurean, The, 298-300
Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 244
Essay on Death, The, 200
Ethelbald, King, his grant to the

Bishop of Worcester, 16-23, 104
Euphues, 116 note, 129-133, 138
Euphuism, 39, 129-133, 138-159

Feet of more than five syllables, 179

note, 191 note, 451, 478

Table of, xvi

Felltham, Owen, 215

Ferrier, Miss, 271

Fielding, 39

Fisher, Bishop, 82, 97-100, in, 203,

217, 271, 334
Florio, 128
Fontes Prosae Numerosae, 9 note, 133

note

Ford, Emanuel, 116 note
Fortescue, Sir John, 76
Froissart (Berners 1 ), 91-96
Froude, Mr., 389, 409-411
Fuller, 362

Gairdner, Mr. James, 76 note
Garden of Cyrus, The, 183, 192 sq. ,

196. 197

Gardiner, Mr. S. R. , 76 note
Gascoigne, 141, 153
Gautier, Th., 203
Gibbon, 223, 281-285, 288, 290, 291,

295' 3io. 374, 397. 425. 448
Gilpin, 294 note

Gladstone, Mr. , 257 note .

Glanvill, 163, 200-203, 22 3. 224
Glasgow Herald, The, 156 note
Goethe, 81

Goldsmith, 260, 345, 362
Gospels, the Anglo-Saxon, 59, 60
Gower, 39

Gray, 259, 284 note, 294 note
" Great " Bible, the, 149 sq.

INDEX

487

Greek, prose rhythm of, 1-8, 15 note

Romances, 39

Green, Mr. Verdant, 158 note
Greville, F. , 101, 133, 140, 159, 161,

162, 223, 325
Guest, Dr., 452 note

Halifax, 228, 235, 236, 257

Hampole, 55 note

Hawkesworth, 270, 350

Hazlitt, 358-362, 434 note

Henley, Mr. W. E. 128, 306, 442

Hermogenes, 2 note, 6 note

Hita, the Arch-priest of, 131

Hobbes, 8, 208-214, 2 3 8

Hook, Theodore, 433 note

Hooker, 75, 122, 134-138, 180, 222,

271. 397. 446. 448
Howell, 215, 216
Hugo, V., 29, 433
Human Nature, 210-214
Hume, 260, 263
Hunt, Leigh, 362-364
Huon of Bourdeaux, 93 sq.
Hurd, Bishop, v, 6-8, 230, 243-248,

266, 291
Huxley, Mr., 441

Imitation, translations of the, 112

Ingram, Dr., 112, 113

lonica, 442

Irving, Edward, 358 note

Isocrates, i note, 2 note

Italics, note on, 354

Jane Eyre, 406-408

Jeffrey, 350, 355, 356

Jerome, St., 145, 147

Jocelyn of Brakelonde, 56 note

Johnson, Dr., 8, 42, 89 note, 132, 193,
223, 232, 248, 263, 265-273, 281,
288, 291, 294, 387, 341, 349, 357,
374. 43-43 2 - 448, 459 note

Joinville, 107

Jonson, Ben, 8, 204-208, 223

" Junius," 257 note

Keats, 295

Kemble, J. H., 25

Ker, Professor W. P., ix note, 12, 48

note

King, Bishop, 214
Kingsley, Charles, 311, 400-405, 425

Lamb, Charles, 128, 255, 349, 350,

362
Landor, 42, 212 note, 298, 305, 306,

311, 324-341, 347, 348, 350, 359,

362, 391-393, 425
Latimer, 105, 120, 127, 128

Latin, prose rhythm of, 1-8

, connection with English, 9 note,

133 note, 140 note, App. II.
Law, 263
Lawrence, Dr. John, vi, 10, n note

, Dr. F. , 273 note

Leechdoms, Anglo-Saxon, 41

L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 238, 239

Letter to a Friend, A, 197, 198

Letter to the Duke of Bedford, 278-280

Letter to Windham, 257

Lever, Charles, 436 note

Life of Schiller, The, 349, 365

Life of Wilson, The, 281

Lilliburlero, 202

Lingua pedantesca, 112 note

Locke, 228, 229, 238

Lockhart, 349

Lonelich (or Lovelich), H. , 84

Longfellow, vii. note

Longinus, 2 note, 6-8, 176 note, 224-

246
Lyly, 129-133, 138, 164, 222, 271,

446
Lytton, the first Lord, 377

Macaulay, Professor G. C. , 94 note

, Lord, 267, 350, 370-375

Mackintosh, Sir J. , 259, 271, 277,

350, 357. 378 note
Mail Coach, The English, 310 sq.
Malmesbury, William of, 107
Malory, 22, 75, 82-92, 100, 101, no,

115, 217, 436

Mandeville, Bernard de, 239, 240
, Sir John, 39, 55, 62-66, 83, 109,

362

Mansel, Dean, 416-420, App. I.
Mapes, W. , 107
Marseillaise, the, 202
Martianus Capella, 15, 280
Mason, John, v, 6-8, 79, 155 note,

248 note, 455-457- App. II.
Masson, Professor David, 200, 357
Mayor, Professor, 98
Melibee, Chaucer's Tale of, 67, 68-71
Meredith, Mr. George, 285, 420, 424,

437-440

Middleton, Conyers, 230, 260-263, 4 2 4
Milton, 92, 103, 157 note, 159, 166,

168-176, 193, 223, 235, 237
Minto, Professor, 164, 166
Montaigne, Florio's, 128
Moore, 298-300
More, Sir T. , 122, 123
Morley of Blackburn, Lord, v
Morris, Dr., 26, 27; references to

his editions and Specimens, chaps.

ii. and iii. , notes passim
, William, 91, 115, 325, 435-437

488 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM

Morte. Arthur, Malory's, 82-92, 115

, the English verse, 83-87

Morton, Canon, 44 sq.
Mummolenus, St., n note
Munday, A., 116 note
Myers, Mr. F. , 427

Napier, Professor, 25
Neate, Mr. Charles, 122 note
Newman, Cardinal, 75, 388-389, 411,

417, 420, 428
Nicholson, Mr. , 63
Nietzsche, 325 note
Nisbet, Mr. , 123 note
Norden, Herr E. , 9 note
North, SirT., 128
"North, Christopher," see Wilson,

John
Nursery rhymes, 23 note

Gates, Rev. John, 168, 169
Orpheus, the story of, 24, 25
Ossian, 31, 66, 343, 405, App. I.
Othere, 23

Parr, Dr. , 260, 274

Parson's Tale, Chaucer's, 67, 68

Paston Letters, The, 76, 80, 81, 221

Paston, Margaret, 81

Pater, Mr. W. H. , n note, 42, 162,

311, 325, 420-426, 436, 439, 461
Pattison, Rev. Mark, 168 note
Paul, Mr. Kegan, v
Peacock, T. L. , 376-378
Pecock, Bishop Reginald, 12, 76-80,

no, 117, 217, 226
Pemberton, 151 note
Peterhouse, The Master of, see Ward,

Dr. A. W.
Phantasies, 441
Photius, 229, 238
Pitt, W. , 305
Plato, 176

Plutarch, North's, 128
Poe, Edgar, 200, 472
Pollard, Mr., 63
Poore, Bishop, 45
Pope, 41

Portent, The, 441
Prayer-Book, The, 125-127
Promptorium Parvulorum, in
Punch, Mr., 378
Purvey, John, 59 note, 123 note
Pusey, Canon, 389 note

Quintilian, chap. i. passim, 12, 90, 104,
147, 224, 225, 244, 246, 341, 396

Raleigh, Sir Walter (I. ), 101, 133, 158-
161, 223

Religio Medici, 193-195

Renan, M. , 180 note

Represser, The, 76-81

" Revised Version," the, 53, 79, 134

note, 142 sq., 152-157
" Rheims " New Testament, the, 153.^.
Rhetoric, Aristotle's, chap. i. passim
Richardson, 260
Robert of Brunne (Manning), 55, 62

of Gloucester, 55

Robertson, 260, 263

Rossetti, Miss Christina, 125 note, 180,

407, 441

, D. G. , 194 note

Ruskin, Mr., 42, 71 note, 85, 179, 214,

311, 325, 353, 382, 392-400, 411,

420, 425, 428
Rymer, 239, 240

Samson, Abbot, 44 note, 56 note
Savile, Sir H., 158
Schelling, Professor, 205
Scott, SirW., 39, 95, 295-297
Septuagint, the, 54, 143 sq.
Shaftesbury, 254-256
Shakespeare, 39, 90, 118, 158, 202
Sheffield, Lord, 281 note, 284
Shelley, P. B. , 202, 297, 298, 325
Shelly, Mr. John, 9 note, 477 note
Skeat, Professor, 25, 35 ; references to

his Specimens, chaps, iii. and iv. ,

notes passim
Sidney, Sir P. , 138-140
Sigurd pause in Kingsley, 405 note
Simylus, 133 note
Smith, Adam, 260, 263-265

, Professor Gregory, ix note

, Sydney, 271, 357, 375 note

, William, Southey on, 286, 287

Smollett, 260

Solomon and Saturn, 36

Soul's Ward, 52

South, 176, 228, 232-235

Southey, 83 note, 93 note, 106, 128,

285-287, 291, 295, 349, 352
Spenser, 19 note, 92, 158
Sprat, 228
Steele, 252
Sterne, 260
Stevenson, Mr. R. L. , 21, 307 note,

440, 441, 457
Sully, M. de, 84
Surrey, 133

Suspiria de Profundis, 306-319
Swift, 239-243, 252, 260, 271, 289,

290, 440, 447
Swinburne, Mr. , 325, 427-435, 439,

461

Taylor, Jeremy, 42, 101, 133, 134,

INDEX

489

159, 178-181, 223, 229, 237, 239,

303, 304, 434
Temple, Sir W. , 228, 232, 236-238,

290, 423

Tennyson, 42, 88
Thackeray, 39, 272, 362, 367, 376,

382-388, 454
Thelwall, 451 note
Thorpe, 25, 38
Thoughts on the Present Discontents,

273-275

Thucydides, 3, 20, 94 note
Tillotson, 228, 229, 232
Toxophilus, 1 20
Traill, H. D., 271, 440
Trevisa, John of, 56, 57, 62, 107
Trollope, A., 367
Tyndale, 59, 60, 116, 123-125, 149 sq.

Urn Burial, 184-190, 195, 196, 224
Urquhart, Sir T., 155
Utopia, 122

Valenciennes, Henri de, 22 note, 109

Vaughan, Professor, 406

Villehardouin, 22 note, 54, 107, 109

Villette, 406-408

Vision of St. Paul, The, 27

Vulgate, the, 53, 54, 107, 108, 143 sq.

Waerferth, Bishop, 38 note
Walpole, Horace, 259
Walton, Izaak, 215, 216, 236
Ward, Dr. A. W. (Master of Peter-
house), 171, 259
Ward, Ned, 239 note
" Wardour Street " language, 19 note,

54, 435-437
Warner, Mr., 63
Welldon, Bishop, 156
Whibley, Mr. Charles, 129
Whitman, 66, 343, 405, App. I.
Wilson, John, "Christopher North,"

305, 306, 321-324
, Thomas, 115, 118, 220, 221

Wisdom., the book of, 54, 144
Woodford, Samuel, 8, 229 note

Wooing of Our Lord, The, 51, 52
Worcester, W. , 80
Wordsworth, 295 and note
Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary, 259
Wulfstan, Archbishop, 37, 38

(Alfred's captain), 24

Wyatt, 133, 141

Wyclif, 55, 57-62, 68, 77, 107, 108,
122, 149 note

Yonge, Miss, 436 note
Yule, Colonel, 63

THE END

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

By Professor GEORGE SAINTSBURY
A HISTORY OF

ENGLISH PROSODY

FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY
TO THE PRESENT DAY

In Three Vols. 8vo.

Vol. I. From the Origins to Spenser. IDS. net.
II. From Shakespeare to Crabbe. 155. net.
III. From Blake to Swinburne. 155. net.

HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY.

Crown 8vo. 55. net.

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

DRYDEN. Library Edition. Crown 8vo. 23. net. Popular
Edition, Crown 8vo, is. 6d. ; Sewed, is. Pocket Edition, Fcap. 8vo,
is. net. [English Men of Letters.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

In Six Vols. Crown 8vo. 75. 6d. each vol.

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE BEGINNING TO
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. By STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE NORMAN CON-
QUEST TO CHAUCER. By Professor W. H. SCHOFIELD, Ph.D.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER. By Professor W. H. SCHOFIELD,

Ph. D. [/ preparation.

ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE (1560-1665). By Professor
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1660-1780).
By EDMUND GOSSE, C.B., M.A.

NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1780-1900).
By Professor GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

A HISTORY OF

ENGLISH POETRY

W. J. COURTHOPE, C.B.,

M.A., D.LiTT., LL.D.

Six vols. 8vo.

Vol. I. The Middle Ages The Influence of the Roman Empire The
Encyclopaedic Education of the Church The Feudal System.
IDS. net.

II. The Renaissance and the Reformation : Influence of the Court and
the Universities. IDS. net.

III. The Intellectual Conflict of the Seventeenth Century ; Decadent

Influence of the Feudal Monarchy ; Growth of the National
Genius. IDS. net.

IV. Development and Decline of the Poetical Drama ; Influence of the

Court and the People. IDS. net.

V. The Constitutional Compromise of the Eighteenth Century. Effects
of the Classical Renaissance ; its Zenith and Decline ; the Early-
Romantic Renaissance. IDs. net.

VI. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry : Effects of the French
Revolution. IDS. net.

THE ENGLISH POETS. Selections, with Critical
Introductions by various writers, and a General Introduc-
tion by MATTHEW ARNOLD. Edited by THOMAS HUMPHRY
WARD, M.A. Crown 8vo.

Vol. I. Chaucer to Donne. 7s. 6d.
II. Ben Jonson to Dryden. 7s. 6d.

III. Addison to Blake. 75. 6d.

IV. Wordsworth to Tennyson (including Appendix). 8s. 6d.

ENGLISH PROSE. Selections, with Critical Introduc-
tions by various writers, and General Introductions to each
Period. Edited by Sir HENRY CRAIK, K.C.B. In Five
volumes. Crown 8vo.

Vol. I. The Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. 73. 6d.
II. The Sixteenth Century to the Restoration. 73. 6d.
III. The Seventeenth Century. 75. 6d.

IV. The Eighteenth Century. 7s. 6d.

V. The Nineteenth Century. 8s. 6d.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

RETURN

UCLA-College Library

PR 756 R5 S1

Illl Illl II II III
L 005 750 071 2

THERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

II 111 I II I II II ll ""' '"'

A 001 157 673 3