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something is lost as well as something gained; and there remains
plainly traceable, in comparing the best prose with the best verse,
a certain broad distinction of method in the web. Tight as the
versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still
leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In
prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits
into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear
remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while
in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable
passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior
of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in his more
delicate enterprise, he fails to be as widely his inferior. But
let us select them from the pages of the same writer, one who was
ambidexter; let us take, for instance, Rumour's Prologue to the
Second Part of Henry IV., a fine flourish of eloquence in
Shakespeare's second manner, and set it side by side with
Falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv. scene iii.; or let us compare
the beautiful prose spoken throughout by Rosalind and Orlando;
compare, for example, the first speech of all, Orlando's speech to
Adam, with what passage it shall please you to select--the Seven
Ages from the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as
Othello's farewell to war; and still you will be able to perceive,
if you have an ear for that class of music, a certain superior
degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of the
parts; a balance in the swing and the return as of a throbbing
pendulum. We must not, in things temporal, take from those who
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