THE MELODY OF PROSE.

TO a carefully trained or to a naturally sensitive ear, there is often a beauty of rhythm in prose as powerful as the most exquisite in verse. Indeed, on some natures the perfect harmony of the prose period produces an effect such as no measured cadence can ever achieve. Not that prose, however melodious, can affect the emotions or stimulate the imagination as poetry can. Only when the mere beauty of concordant or contrasted sounds is considered in isolation and apart from the higher emotional forces, is it true that prose is capable of higher harmonies than verse. Only for the direct effect upon those senses that respond to the enchantment of well-matched cadence can it be maintained. But if the supreme rhythm of prose is higher than the rhythms of verse, so is it far less common. The inner mystery has been divulged to few, and those few,

save on rare occasions of inspiration, have been unable to cast the spell. Like the crowning accomplishment in all other arts, it can be better illustrated than defined. That there is some- thing divergent, almost antagonistic, to measure in its forma- tion, is shown in the fact that the poets, however skilful in prose,

have never quite reached it. Milton's poetry is beyond that of all others filled with the magnificent concord of sweet sounds; but in his prose, splendid and sonorous as it is, we never find the true gem. The matrix is there, but the crevice that should hold the ruby is empty. There are phrases of great beauty, but the notes struck are too few. Exquisite if only sustained, might have been such a period as that which describes how the soldier-saints of the Puritan ideal compose their spirits " with the solemn and divine harmonies of music, while the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied descants in lofty fugues," or that which tells how "every free and gentle spirit " is " born a knight." Lander is, again, an instance of the poet whose prose has every other quality of greatness, but who does not reach the perfection of melody ; and for the same reason, that his ear was a poet's ear. To show how

near he came, and yet how certain it is that he did not attain to the last secret, one has only to quote the phrases that conclude his eloquent dedication of the " Hellenics " to Pope Pins IX. :—

" Cunning is not wisdom ; prevarication is not policy ; and (novel as the notion is, it is equally true) armies are not strength : Acre and Waterloo show it, and the flames of the Kremlin and the solitudes of Fontainebleau. One honest man, one wise man, one peaceful man, commands a hundred millions without a baton and without a charger. He wants no fortress to protect him ; ho stands higher than any citadel can raise him, brightly conspicuous to the most distant nations, God's servant by election, God's image by beneficence."

This is beautifully written. There is much to excite the imagination and to raise the sympathies of association, but of word melody, dissociated from the thought, there is little to charm. Place beside it the famous passage from De Quincey from "The Dream-Vision of the Infinite" that ends the essay on "Lord Rosse's Telescopes:"— " 'Angel, I will go no farther. For the spirit of man aches under this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God's house. Let me lie down in the grave, that I may find rest from the persecutions of the Infinite ; for end, I see, there is none.' And from all the listening stars that shone around issued one choral chant—' Even so it is : angel, thou knowest that it is : end there is none, that ever yet we heard of.' End is there none ?' the angel solemnly demanded ; and is this the sorrow that kills you ?' But no voice answered, that he might answer himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens, saying, End is there none to the universe of God ? Lo ! also there is no beginning.' " Here is the true melody of prose, though a melody rarely obtained in such perfection even by De Quincey. De Quincey has it when he sees how " a vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever ;" when he is buried " in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids," or "flies from the wrath of Brame through all the forests of Asia ;" when on Easter morning " the hedges were rich with white roses ;" or when " the heart-quaking sound of Consul Ronanus" dissolves the pageant of his dreams. These sym- phonies of sound we must pass by, to examine more in detail the melody of prose in other writers. But let the passage quoted above stand as the touchstone of successful harmony, for it is De Quincey, if any one, who fully learned the secret.

The history of all literature shows how far more rapidly the style of poetry develops than does that of prose. In English literature this is particularly marked. Doubtless the Romances have a certain rhythmical swing ; and in the " Morte d'Arthur " there are a considerable number of passages of pleasant sound,—but taken as a whole, the higher harmmay is entirely absent. Maundeville's writings, too, have often a certain quaint melodiousness. His description of the abbey of monks near the City of Camsay, where is the fair garden full of divers beasts, and where "every day, when the monks have eaten, the almoner carries what remains to the garden, and strikes on the garden-gate with a silver clicket that he holds in his hand, and anon all the beasts of the hill and of divers places of the garden come out to the number of three or four thousand,"—is not without suggestions of great beauty. The earlier writers are to a great extent debarred from the happiest effects by the use of an unvaried rhythm, which prodUces the same effect on the ear as measure, and so robs them of those changes which are essential to the best prose. In the Romances, in Lily the Euphuist, this is easily seen, and though less marked, it is present in Latimer and Sidney, in Bacon and Isaak Walton. Hooker, indeed, conquered the monotony ; but he is content with clearing the stream of thought from affectations and obscurities, and with developing a style of eloquence and imagination. With Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne there is, again, a monotony of cadence, though a beautiful monotony. In the great writers of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, the melody we seek for is not to be found. Dryden and Swift, Pope and

Addison, had enough to do to make their style completely flexible and perspicuous. They did all that was needed to render the instrument complete, but left it for others to draw from it its most perfect tones. Though Bolingbroke woke hero and there a faint prelude, it was reserved for the nameless and mysterious writer of the greatest political satires that the world has ever seen first to achieve success. If Chatham could tell William Pitt to study " Junius " as his model, and Coleridge give such great, if not unqualified, praise, there is no need for an apology for such a contention. When "Junius" banters the Duke of Grafton on his connection with the University of Cambridge, and tells him that its admiration will cease with office, it is impossible not to recognise a new element present in English prose style :— " Whenever the spirit of distributing prebends and bishoprics shall have departed from you, you will find that learned seminary perfectly recovered from the delirium of an Installation, and, what in truth it ought to be, once more a peaceful scene of slumber and thoughtless meditation. The venerable tutors of the University will no longer distress your modesty by proposing you for a pattern to their pupils. The learned dullness of declamation will be silent ; and even the venal Muse, though happiest in fiction, will forget your virtues."

The fall of the last sentence, indeed, is, for sound, inimitable. Contemporary with, or somewhat earlier than "Junius," there are, however, writers whose work is capable of rhythms almost as melodious. There is Sterne, with the reflection on Uncle Toby's oath :—

" The accusing spirit which flow up to Heaven's Chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in ; and the recording angel, as ho wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out for ever."

And, far deeper in sentiment, there is Johnson's lament in the preface to the dictionary, where he tells the story of his book, written "not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconveniences and distractions in sickness and in sorrow :"—

" If the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me ? I have protracted my work till

most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds. I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise."

Of course, Johnson did not always write like this. Too often the exquisite melody of such a phrase as " this gloom of soli- tude" is exchanged for the mechanical, organ-grinding tones

of the Rambler. Personal feelings always inspired him. He gets the same ring in the letter to Lord Chesterfield and in the passage on Paraslise Lost, where he is, in truth, comparing

Milton's life with his own.

When Barke's hand touches the instrument, whatever of rigidity belongs to Johnson vanishes. The passages in which the finer melody is found delight the ear as does De Quincey. For instance :—

" Their prey is lodged in England ; and the cries of India are given to the seas and winds, to be blown about, at every breaking up of the monsoon, over a remote and unhearing ocean."

Or :— " Here the manufacturer and the husbandman will bless the just and punctual hand that in India has torn the cloth from the loom or wrested the scanty portion of rice and salt from the peasant of Bengal, or wrong from him the very opium in which he forgot his oppressions and his oppressor."

With the orators who were B arke's contemporaries it is not our purpose to deal, since the imperfect manner in which their speeches were reported makes it impossible to do them justice. Gibbon, then, next claims consideration. It is too much the fashion in these days to sneer at Gibbon's prose as monotonous and stilted. Yet, in truth, it was capable of great beauty of develop- ment. What could be more harmonious than the reflection on Julian at Paris P-

" If Julian could now revisit the capital of France, he might con- verse with men of science and genius, capable of understanding and of instructing a disciple of the Greeks ; he might excuse the lively and graceful follies of a nation whose martial spirit has never been enervated by the indulgence of luxury ; and he must applaud the perfection of that inestimable art which softens and refines and embellishes the intercourse of social life."

This has a serenity of cadence almost equal to the account, in the " Autobiography," of the writing of the last page of the last chapter of the " Decline and Fall." Yet neither can com- pare for beauty of sound with the last sentence of the well-known criticism of the consequences of the Reformation :-

" The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished : the web of mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians; and the pillars of Revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the license without the temper of philosophy."

With the great prose writers of the beginning of the present century, it is impossible to deal in detail. In many of them the true melody of prose, as we have attempted to show it by illus- tration, is present. In one of the greatest, if not the best known, it is easily discovered. Sir William Napier, in the "History of the War in the Peninsula," shows that he was a man blessed with an ear for prose style unusually fine. His description of the advance of the English infantry at the close of the Battle of Albuera is unrivalled :—

" Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order, their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as slowly, and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the furthest edge of the height. There the French Reserve mixed with the straggling maltitade, and endeavoured to sus- tain the fight ; but the effort only increased the irremediable con- fusion ; the mighty mass gave way, and like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the steep. The rain flowed after in streams dis- coloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill !"

If for no other purpose than that of contrast, we might put side by side with this a passage from another military historian,

whose work is among the best of histories in the English language, and is only not a classic because it is overwhelmed by the public ignorance of all things Indian. Captain Grant Duff's " History of the Mahrattas " contains a description of the advance of the Peshwa's army on the morning of the Battle of Kirkee, which, for charm of literary skill, it is difficult to match, but which is just too elaborate for quotation. Instead, we will quote his friend's account of a Mahratta charge. The magnificence of the Mahratta onset Monntstuart Elphinstone had himself admired, bad witnessed" the thunder of the ground,

the flashing of their arms, the brandishing of their spears, the agitation of their banners rushing through the wind."

In our own generation, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Symonds are among the most melodious of prose writers. Each in his way is excellent. One of Mr. Ruskin's happiest efforts, a description of Southern Italy, may be quoted :—

"Silent villages, earthquake-shaken, without commerce, without, industry, without knowledge, without hope, gleam in white ruin from hillside to hillside ; far-winding wrecks of immemorial walls sur- round the dust of cities long forsaken : the mountain streams moan through the cold arches of their foundations, green with weed, and rage over the heaps of their fallen towers. Far above in thunder. blue serration stand the eternal edges of the angry Apennine, dark with rolling impendence of volcanic cloud."

A man who has written a passage such as this may claim to be forgiven any number of weaknesses and follies. Mr. Symonds has struck the public fancy most in his descriptive writings, and is best known by them. In his historical books, however, his work is just as worthy of recognition, not for learning only, but for beauty of style. In " The Predecessors of Shakespeare," he has written a passage, personifying the Muse of the Elizabethan comedy, of wonderful sweetness of tone :—

" Hers were Greene's meadows, watered by an English stream.

Here, Heywood's moss-grown manor-honses. Peele's goddess- haunted lawns were hers ; and hers, the palace-bordered paved ways of Verona. Hers was the darkness of the grave, the charnel- house of Webster. She walked the air-built loggie of Lyly's dreams, and paced the clouds of Jonson's masques. She donned that ponderous sock and trod the measures of Volpone. She mouthed the mighty line of Marlowe. Chapman's massy periods and Marston's pointed sentences were hers by heart. She went abroad through primrose paths with Fletcher, and learned Shirley's lambent wit. She wandered amid dark, dry places of the outcast soul with Ford. Hamlet was hors ; Anthony and Cleopatra was hers ; and hers, too, was The Tempest. Then, after many years, her children mated with famed poets in far distant lands. Faust and Wallenstein, Lucrezia Borgia and Marion Delorme, are hers."

Here, again, is the true melody.

To write of melodious prose and not to quote from Newman or Carlyle, seems an anomaly. The clear and liquid cadences of the one, and the picturesque magnificence of the other, has on some ears an effect hardly to be obtained from any other writing. To illustrate these qualities, one has only to recall the passage on music from the "University Sermons," or the close of the " Life of Sterling." Space, however, will not allow us more than a reference to the enchantments of the style of either passage.

Among the orators of our time, Mr. Bright alone can claim to have produced melodious prose. The perorations of his speeches are indeed distinguished by a remarkable sweetness of cadence.

So inadequate and so hasty an attempt to exhibit by quotation the resources of English prose literature as the present, seems to need some apology. Let us hope that those who know and love that literature will not be displeased to see the favourites of their reading quoted as they have been here ; and that they will pardon the omissions and the rejections. In one respect at least, our inquiry cannot be distasteful, for it serves to remind one how splendid, how wide, and hom various is the field of English prose.