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have little, the little that they have; the merits of prose are
inferior, but they are not the same; it is a little kingdom, but an
independent.
3. Rhythm of the Phrase.--Some way back, I used a word which still
awaits an application. Each phrase, I said, was to be comely; but
what is a comely phrase? In all ideal and material points,
literature, being a representative art, must look for analogies to
painting and the like; but in what is technical and executive,
being a temporal art, it must seek for them in music. Each phrase
of each sentence, like an air or a recitative in music, should be
so artfully compounded out of long and short, out of accented and
unaccented, as to gratify the sensual ear. And of this the ear is
the sole judge. It is impossible to lay down laws. Even in our
accentual and rhythmic language no analysis can find the secret of
the beauty of a verse; how much less, then, of those phrases, such
as prose is built of, which obey no law but to be lawless and yet
to please? The little that we know of verse (and for my part I owe
it all to my friend Professor Fleeming Jenkin) is, however,
particularly interesting in the present connection. We have been
accustomed to describe the heroic line as five iambic feet, and to
be filled with pain and confusion whenever, as by the conscientious
schoolboy, we have heard our own description put in practice.
'
All night | the dread | less an | gel un | pursued,' {2}
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