By yielding make that blow but small
At which proud oaks and cedars fall.'

There you have a passage of felicitous prose culminating in a stanza of
trite and fifth-rate verse. Yes, Walton's instinct is sound; for he is
keying up the pitch; and verse, even when mediocre in quality, has its
pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your
Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still
by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse to a
mere rollicking 'catch':

Man's life is but vain, for 'tis subject to pain
And sorrow, and short as a bubble;
'Tis a hodge-podge of business and money and care,
And care, and money and trouble...

--which is even worse rubbish, and yet a step upwards in emotion because
Venator actually sings it to music. 'Ay marry, sir, this is music
indeed,' approves Brother Peter; 'this cheers the heart.'

In this and the preceding lecture, Gentlemen, I have enforced at some
length the opinion that to understand the many essential differences
between verse and prose we must constantly bear in mind that verse, being
metrical, keeps the character originally imposed on it by musical
accompaniment and must always, however far the remove, be referred back
to its origin and to the emotion which music excites.

Mr George Bernard Shaw having to commit his novel "Cashel Byron's
Profession" to paper in a hurry, chose to cast it in blank verse as being
more easily and readily written so: a performance which brilliantly