because another pattern has been formally imposed upon him by the
laws of verse. For that is the essence of a prosody. Verse may be
rhythmical; it may be merely alliterative; it may, like the French,
depend wholly on the (quasi) regular recurrence of the rhyme; or,
like the Hebrew, it may consist in the strangely fanciful device of
repeating the same idea. It does not matter on what principle the
law is based, so it be a law. It may be pure convention; it may
have no inherent beauty; all that we have a right to ask of any
prosody is, that it shall lay down a pattern for the writer, and
that what it lays down shall be neither too easy nor too hard.
Hence it comes that it is much easier for men of equal facility to
write fairly pleasing verse than reasonably interesting prose; for
in prose the pattern itself has to be invented, and the
difficulties first created before they can be solved. Hence,
again, there follows the peculiar greatness of the true versifier:
such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Victor Hugo, whom I place beside
them as versifier merely, not as poet. These not only knit and
knot the logical texture of the style with all the dexterity and
strength of prose; they not only fill up the pattern of the verse
with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give us, besides, a
rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of
counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now
contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and
the verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a little further on,
the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will
reach their solution on the same ringing syllable. The best that
can be offered by the best writer of prose is to show us the
development of the idea and the stylistic pattern proceed hand in
hand, sometimes by an obvious and triumphant effort, sometimes with
a great air of ease and nature. The writer of verse, by virtue of