'Mother Athens, eye of Greece,'


or merely 'Mother Athens,' and the game is up, for the trochaic
beat has been suggested. The eccentric scansion of the groups is
an adornment; but as soon as the original beat has been forgotten,
they cease implicitly to be eccentric. Variety is what is sought;
but if we destroy the original mould, one of the terms of this
variety is lost, and we fall back on sameness. Thus, both as to
the arithmetical measure of the verse, and the degree of regularity
in scansion, we see the laws of prosody to have one common purpose:
to keep alive the opposition of two schemes simultaneously
followed; to keep them notably apart, though still coincident; and
to balance them with such judicial nicety before the reader, that
neither shall be unperceived and neither signally prevail.

The rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. Here, too, we
write in groups, or phrases, as I prefer to call them, for the
prose phrase is greatly longer and is much more nonchalantly
uttered than the group in verse; so that not only is there a
greater interval of continuous sound between the pauses, but, for
that very reason, word is linked more readily to word by a more
summary enunciation. Still, the phrase is the strict analogue of
the group, and successive phrases, like successive groups, must
differ openly in length and rhythm. The rule of scansion in verse
is to suggest no measure but the one in hand; in prose, to suggest
no measure at all. Prose must be rhythmical, and it may be as much
so as you will; but it must not be metrical. It may be anything,