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inherently rhythmical strain of the English language, that the bad
writer--and must I take for example that admired friend of my
boyhood, Captain Reid?--the inexperienced writer, as Dickens in his
earlier attempts to be impressive, and the jaded writer, as any one
may see for himself, all tend to fall at once into the production
of bad blank verse. And here it may be pertinently asked, Why bad?
And I suppose it might be enough to answer that no man ever made
good verse by accident, and that no verse can ever sound otherwise
than trivial when uttered with the delivery of prose. But we can
go beyond such answers. The weak side of verse is the regularity
of the beat, which in itself is decidedly less impressive than the
movement of the nobler prose; and it is just into this weak side,
and this alone, that our careless writer falls. A peculiar density
and mass, consequent on the nearness of the pauses, is one of the
chief good qualities of verse; but this our accidental versifier,
still following after the swift gait and large gestures of prose,
does not so much as aspire to imitate. Lastly, since he remains
unconscious that he is making verse at all, it can never occur to
him to extract those effects of counterpoint and opposition which I
have referred to as the final grace and justification of verse,
and, I may add, of blank verse in particular.
4. Contents of the Phrase.--Here is a great deal of talk about
rhythm--and naturally; for in our canorous language rhythm is
always at the door. But it must not be forgotten that in some
languages this element is almost, if not quite, extinct, and that
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