ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM.*
THERE is a strong personal note in every book written by Professor Saintsbury, and it is this note more than anything else which distinguishes his work. To enjoy it as it should be enjoyed we must get rid of any prejudices we may have for sanity in the criticism of detail, or for soundness of theory, for in this connexion such qualities are wholly irrelevant; and whether Professor Saintsbury call his latest book A History of English Prose Rhythm, or Select Passages of English Prose, or • A History of Bngissh Pros. Rhythm. By George Saintabtu7. London: Macmillan and Co. El4e. net.J An Essay on. Style, its chief interest for us will be the per- sonality which is revealed in it. Thus, at the end of his third chapter, lest we should be under any misapprehension, he has the following note : "Some readers will no doubt say, 'Where hit Hampole ?' My copies of Horstmann's Hampoliana would show a fair and fairly long acquaintance with him. But the difficulties of dates and personalities are great ; and I doubt whether, in prose, anything attributable to him with any certainty would do us much good." Or, again : "If I have quoted or analysed nothing from the voluminous supplements to the older editions of De Quincey . . it is from no want of original acquaintance with them at the time of their appear- ance, or failure to renew that acquaintance." All this is engaging, candid, even a little naïve, and when such qualities are joined to wide reading and an endless industry, a critic has little heart for pointing out that the book teaches us nothing, that it begins with a misunderstanding and ends with- out having yielded any profitable results. Professor Saintsbury set out to write thsebook, as one sets out to seek an adventure. The results are disappointing even to himself. There is no definition of terms, no law; but this does not distress the author in the least. He tells us, quite happily, in the last chapter : "It may seem that this is an exceeding poor and beggarly result of generalities from so long a history of the subject and so widely thrown a netting of examples. But there is nothing against which, in the course of some thirty years of literary history, I have learnt to set my face more flintily than parade of systematic theory." When we turn to the Table of Axioms, Inferences, and Suggestions, which the author warns us are strictly provisional, we read that "the great principle of foot-arrangement in prose and of prose rhythm is variety," or that "feet retain in prose their intrinsic character, i.e , the iamb gives a 'rising,' and the trochee a 'falling' effect." Really, after this, we are surprised that Professor Saintsbury should have taken pains to avoid quoting M. Jourdain's remark on prose from Le Bourgeois Gentzlhonzme.
Rhythm is a continuous movement. In poetry we mark the passage of this movement within a given space ; we take a foot as a unit, and this foot repeated a certain number of times com- pletes a line, the line repeated a certain number of times com- pletes a verse. Poetry implies motion as its chief condition : there are the reaping song of Lityerses, the sewing songs of medieval France, the strophe and antistrophe of Greek tragedy chanted as the chorus approached and withdrew from the altar, seamen's chanties, soldiers' marching songs. The regular succession of repeated movements is the metre or measure of rhythm, and without this measure we cannot lay down any laws concerning it. In proportion as poetry moves away from the formal dance or from the control of a regular succession of identical movements, and approaches the theatre in which dramatic, and consequently unexpected, action governs it, the repetition tends to weaken. When blank verse becomes the speech of the theatre the great sonorous pas- sages of Milton are made possible ; the repetition is still there, but the line has lost its individuality, its music is not lost, but merged in another kind of music. It is this other kind of music, the rhythm which is not controlled by any repeated movement, but flows continuously and in complete independence of it, which is the rhythm of prose. The splendid passage from the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah in the Authorised Version, which Professor Saintsbury very justly considers "one of the highest points of English prose," is an example : "Arise, shine ; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." Here the rhythm is purely dramatic, it has no connexion with any repeated movement, it derives mainly from the balance of sound and silence. Eack sentence is a shout of jay which cannot be prolonged, and the burst of sound is necessarily balanced by a complete silenee.- Such prose originates in blank verse modified by the need for dramatic utterance, and it may be said that this prose has a reciprocal influence upon later poetry, the Elizabethan dramatists shaping the language for the .Authorised Version, which develops the periodic rhythm independently of repetition, and inspires in its turn the splendour of Milton's verse. In
prose every period has its own principle of organle develop,. ment, and when it is completed there is no repeat or return, but with the new period begins the application of a new principle. To say that "the great principle of prose rhythm is variety" is merely futile. What principle underlies the variety ? To us the truth of the matter seems to be that
when the written language becomes a fine art and mimetic, which in its origin it is not, it becomes dramatic ; and, in pro-
portion as this dramatic language becomes fully expressive of passion and feeling, it becomes musical; but as the rhythm of
prose does not result from the employment of metre, it seems to us impossible to attempt the scansion of prose by the application of any foot-system. "Prose neither possesses metre nor is destitute of rhythm." With this quotation from Aristotle Professor Saintsbury begins his work, and there- after expends an enormous amount of energy to remain in precisely the same place.
When all this has been said, however, there remain Pro- fessor Saintsbury's industry, his wide reading, and his sincere love for literature. With these qualities, and with that engaging and candid nature upon which we have remarked, it would have been impossible for anyone to have written an utterly unprofitable book. The spirit in which A History of English Prose Rhythm was begun was the spirit of adventure, and to the adventurous, even when they fail of their objective, many pleasant, profitable, and diverting things happen by the way. We do not believe that it is possible to handle the subject of prose rhythm in the manner attempted by Professor Saintsbury ; and, so far as his method can be called a method at all, we do not think it has yielded any profitable results ; but he has many admirable things to say of the authors whom he discusses in the course of his history, and he has a keen instinct and a generous enthusiasm for what is fine. We cannot refuse to admire a critic who is capable of such a passionate indignation whenever he finds it necessary to mention the Revised Version, or who can roll a passage of Donne about his palate as though he were relishing a sound wine :—
"He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy summer out of winter though thou have no spring ; though in the ways of fortune, of understanding., or con- science, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest to fill all penuries."
Here, says Professor Saintsbury, there can be no change without disaster. When he turns to Swift he writes :
"His prose is never, to a sound taste well cultivated, in- harmonious, or monotonous, or mean ; but there never, in English, has been a prose in which harmony was secured with so few means taken to secure it." Swift's style, however, is not a plain style : its simplicity and ease are merely features ; it is the great style, in which the simplicity of function is the result of an organic complexity, it is a style in which the material has been entirely consumed by the idea. It is not that Professor Saintsbury has said anything very original or striking ; but he has judged everything from his own point of view ; he follows a sound tradition, perhaps a slightly academic tradition, but he has brought to it his own personal feeling and enthusiasm. We differ from his estimate of Conyers Middleton; we do not think he has thoroughly understood the excellence of Gibbon. With very great tact, since he has chosen to praise Swinburne's prose, he has given an example from Blake referring to the Songs of Innocence.
We are a little inclined to distrust a critic who praises this overcrowded, disorderly, and finicking style, and who will let such a cacophonous phrase as "and falls always as a wave does" pass without comment ; but it would be difficult to- find a better example from Swinhurne's prose, Perhaps that is Professor Saintsbury's chief art, the art of seleetion.
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