FOOTNOTES:

Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all that stood by him; and he cried, "Cause every man to go out from me." And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brethren, etc.

We must always remember that the emotional appeal whether in prose or verse is the same to us. We do not get one kind of ecstasy by reading poetical prose and another kind by reading verse. Our inner soul is stirred, our aesthetic faculties are touched in the same way if we read a beautiful love letter like one in prose of Eloise's, or a love poem in verse. And it may be said here that no poet has improved upon those prose epistles by changing them into metrical form. An idea colored with emotion and a beautiful description give us the same effects in prose as they do in verse. The test of poetry is in our own souls.

We can find poetry in the most unexpected places, and the reader who wants to look for it will be able to see that poets like Wordsworth and Whitman were poets in their prose critical prefaces as well as in theLyrical BalladsandLeaves of Grass. As a matter of fact, Whitman used paragraphs from his critical essays, word for word, inLeaves of Grass, but arranged in free verse form.

It is true that at times the poetry cannot be distilled, as it were, from the body of a prose work; a particular passage cannot be lifted up and called poetry, though it be such (dependent, however, on what goes before and after). For example, every reader is thrilled with emotion when he comes to the conclusion of the chapter inVanity Fair, where Amelia Sedley is praying for George Osborne, who was lying dead on his face with a bullet through his heart. This line is poetry, but only by reason of our taking it into consideration with earlier parts of the novel. It could not be published alone, for it would be meaningless.But the same is true of poetry in verse. When Horatio says of Hamlet "now cracks a noble heart," and hopes that flights of angels will sing him to his rest, the passage is effective only because we have lived with Hamlet and felt with him and admired him. Printed alone the words would mean little. The poetry of a great novel, like that of a verse play, is not always in isolated passages, but in the entire novel or play from which it cannot be extracted by quotation.

All lovers of poetry cannot help being indebted to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who showed he knew what constitutes poetry when he composed the famousOxford Book of English Verse. But one is grieved that one must differ with him when it comes to literary criticism. In his book on theArt of Writingthere is a chapter called "On the Difference Between Verse and Prose" which justifies inversion of the natural order of words in verse and affirms that this inversion (of course along with metre and rhyme at will) is the difference between verse and prose. He uses the old illustration that rhyme, metre and inversion help the memory, and that since the first poets sang their poems to the harp, and music and emotion were introduced, everything is changed down to the natural order of the words.

Now, aside from the fact that not all of the earliest emotional compositions were sung to the harp, it is admitted on all sides that poetry is no longer written primarily to be sung to the harp. Hence there is no further necessity for this inversion of words. The natural order of prose should be retained in emotional writing, with occasional deviations. But most certainly this inversion does not constitute the difference between poetry and non-poetry even if it often does make verse different from prose.

Sir Arthur gives us a few lines of Milton in the inverse order in which they were written and says they are verse with the accent of poetry. He then rewrites them in prose order. The inference is that they no longer have that accent of poetry. They are not poetry in the prose version, however, because they were not poetry in the original verse order. He takes four lines from the second book ofParadise Regained, describing Christ's ascent up a hill, and gives us a prose paraphrase of them. Here are the lines as Milton wrote them:

Up to a hill anon his steps he rearedFrom whose high top to ken the prospect round,If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd;But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.

Here is Quiller-Couch's prose rendering:

Thereupon he climbed a hill on the chance that the view from its summit might disclose some sign of human habitation—a herd, a sheep-cote, a cottage perhaps. But he could see nothing of the sort.

This prose paraphrase really proves that the original had no touch of poetry. Because the passage as written in metre uses poetic diction like "anon," and "ken," employs inversion like "steps he reared," "none he saw," it is assumed that the passage must be poetry, but it is not, for it lacks ecstasy. It is merely one of the prosaic passages in a composition that contains poems, and is needed to bridge over the poems.

A prose paraphrase or explanation of a verse poem is always interesting in helping us understand the nature of poetry. For example, Hearn, a poet himself, took up many English poems and paraphrased and explained them to his Japanese students. Some of his paraphrases areactually greater poems than the originals. Most of the great poems in literature have been analyzed or paraphrased by biographers and commentators. No one calls these paraphrases poetry. But are we sure that they are not? Are we certain that none of the original emotion or ideas are left intact in the paraphrase? On the contrary, I believe that the poetry still remains in the paraphrase. True, often the manner of expressing an idea or emotion is what counts in making it poetry, but expression alone does not make poetry. Even a metrical, emotional and beautiful utterance of a commonplace idea sometimes becomes poetry, but I cannot concede that the prose version of a great verse poem may not be poetry if still emotionally expressed.

Let me take a concrete instance. The following passage fromParadise Lostis considered, no doubt justly, poetry, because of the idea, the emotion and the rhythm (academically speaking):

What though the field be lost?All is not lost; the unconquerable will,And study of revenge, immortal hate,And courage never to submit or yield,And what is else not to be overcome.

Let us paraphrase this passage and try to retain the idea, the emotion and a prose rhythm by just changing a few words.

And suppose we lost the battle? We have not lost everything. We still have our unconquerable will, our plans for revenge, our eternal hatred, and courage never to give in or surrender, and above all never to be defeated.

Is this passage poetry or not? I submit that it is, if the original is. It is rhythmical (though it doesn't have to be so), the original idea is there, and the passion of thespeaker has not been rooted out. All this proves, then, that much of what we call poetry in verse is either not poetry at all or that there is more poetry in the prose of the world than we ever imagined.

Is there any poetry in Lamb'sTales from Shakespeare? Beyond doubt; just as there is poetry in the tales and histories from which Shakespeare drew his plays. Is there not poetry in the critical discourses about poets where the critic loses himself in the poet's emotions and becomes that poet and gives you his spirit, as, for example, Carlyle does in his study of Burns, or Symonds in hisGreek Poets?

All this leads to one conclusion: that we should not be concerned as to whether a piece of literature is or is not something that may be included in a definition of poetry, but whether it is a humane, ecstatic, emotional, thoughtful piece of writing. Do not be worried where the poetry is. Rest assured it is there somewhere, for we should judge poetry by the effect on us and not by the compliance with rules of rhythm or any other rules of composition. And all great literature which has a similar emotional effect upon us, whether it is in verse or prose, has poetry in it. Walt Whitman did not insist that hisLeaves of Grassbe called poetry; yet that is what it turns out to be.

The reader may reply that if poetry is to be found to a large extent in the prose of the world, all distinctions are broken down as to what poetry is and is not, and you might as well look for it in the stories in the newspapers. I gladly accept the challenge: there is poetry in the newspapers. When theSpoon River Anthologyappeared many critics said it was nothing more than a collection of newspaper obituaries, told in the first person, that differed from news items only in that the lines were printed as free verse, and that therefore it was no more poetry than anewspaper story. On the contrary, it would have been poetry had it appeared as prose in a newspaper.

I have no doubt many readers will recall newspaper stories that moved them like a poem. Those especially well written ones of love tragedies are often poetry; by virtue of their ecstatic nature they arouse our emotions.

The poetry of our day is not monopolized by dabblers in metre and is not shared exclusively by readers of verse. It is being written by our prose writers and occasionally by our journalists, and is being read by the general public. It is not the heritage of the professor or the critic. The verse poets and readers are not the only lovers of poetry, but the great public who readsUncle Tom's CabinandLorna Dooneis reading poetry, albeit not of the highest order.

I do not mean to imply that there is more poetry in the prose writings of a nation's literature than in its verse writings. The prose writer usually travels leisurely and waxes ecstatic occasionally. He does not concentrate his emotions nor seek to depict them immediately. The verse writer as a rule tries to depict emotions from the start. He is greater as a poet than many prose writers, because he poetizes, thinking he must do this naturally in verse, while the prose writer does not believe it is his duty to do so in prose, but he is often a poet because he cannot help it. There is more poetry in a volume of Burns or Shelley or Heine than in a volume of similar length by a prose writer, because these poets tried to put emotion into every separate portion, no matter how small. Yet a prose writer can do the same thing if he wants to do so.

Any one who is a great reader of books of travel is impressed by the fact that in these works there is occasionally literature of ecstasy of a high order. There are descriptions and narratives recorded with beauty, vividness,interest; there are reflections, insight into human nature that often surpass the works of prose fiction and verse poetry we read. Yet because these works are called "travels," they are not supposed to contain poems or creative literature. Had the authors given us as good description in verse, the critics would have called them poets.

Hearn's books on Japan are after all works of travel, but they contain poetry or the literature of ecstasy because Hearn was a poet. I am not claiming for many works of travel a place only as literature, for it is usually conceded that the best books of travel are literature, but I urge that many of these books are in parts poetry, and their authors are poets. It is recognized, however, that Pierre Loti is a poet in his books of travel. Doughty'sArabia Desertais full of poetry.

Robinson CrusoeandGulliver's Travelsare but works of travel, and are poetry because of the ecstatic presentation of ideas. You will find poems in prose not only in the travels of great writers, like Goethe, Taine, Heine, in the works of old writers who were chiefly travelers, like Hakluyt, Mandeville, Marco Polo, but in many volumes that have been published in our own day.

Anthologies of thousands of poems in prose could be compiled. The prose of every literature is full of poetry, even concentrated poetry, more or less rhythmical. You may cull poems out of the prose writings of men in England to-day, from Hardy, Moore, Yeats, Symons, Kipling, Hudson, Conrad, Galsworthy, Hewlett and D. H. Lawrence.

You can find poetry in various scenes of the great body of prose dramatists that have grown up in Europe since Ibsen, in Hauptmann, in Synge, in Chekhov, in Jacinto Benavente, in dialogues where an idea is fought for oran emotion displayed. It is manifestly absurd to crown with the name of poetry every petty emotion or description by some versifier, and deny it to the great dramatists who depict passions and color great ideas with emotion. No one thought of denying the title of poets to the dramatists when they formerly wrote in verse. Are you going to deny it to them because they give us the same, if not a greater effect in their prose than the old dramatist did in verse?

And I find much poetry, especially in letters, memoirs and biographies. I find poems in biographies like Bisland'sHearn, Meynell'sFrancis Thompson, Woodberry'sPoe, Lawton'sBalzac. I give these more or less recent books as examples. The works are full of emotional passages dealing with crucial events in the lives of the subjects. You will find poetry in famous biographies like Moore'sByron, Dowden'sShelley, Forster'sDickens, Cooke'sRuskin, Bielschowsky'sGoethe, Froude'sCarlyle, etc., to name just the lives of some literary men.

It is particularly pleasing to find poetry in literary prose criticism. For it was always held that criticism was but a secondary art, rarely creative in the same sense as poetry, supposed to be a product of the mind and not the soul, and merely a commentary on poetry. It is true, formerly poets were often inclined to write their criticism in verse, thinking that thus it became poetry. But it is only the ecstatic presentation of critical ideas that makes criticism poetry, whether in prose or verse. Poets have often described the mission of poetry in verse, and given us genuine poems. Horace and Verlaine have done this. But we have had great poetry in the critical work in prose of many critics. You will find poetry in Carlyle, Ruskin, Goethe, Pater, Brandes. You will find it in the proseessays of poets very often in spite of the popular tradition that poets are not good prose writers.

I give two examples. The first is from Swinburne's book on Blake:

To him the veil of outer things seemed always to tremble with some breath behind it; seemed at times to be rent in sunder with clamour and sudden lightning. All the void of earth and air seemed to quiver with the passage of sentient wings and palpitate under the pressure of conscious feet. Flowers and weeds, stars and stones, spoke with articulate lips and gazed with living eyes. Hands were stretched towards him from beyond the darkness of material nature, to tempt or to support, to guide or to restrain. His hardest facts were the vaguest allegories of other men. To him all symbolic things were literal, all literal things symbolic. About his path and about his bed, around his ears and under his eyes, an infinite play of spiritual life seethed and swarmed or shone and sang. Spirits imprisoned in the husk and shell of earth consoled or menaced him. Every leaf bore a growth of angels; the pulse of every minute sounded as the falling foot of God; under the rank raiment of weeds, in the drifting down of thistles, strange faces frowned and white hair fluttered; tempters and allies, wraiths of the living and phantoms of the dead, crowded and made populous the winds that blew about him, the fields and hills over which he gazed.

The second is from James Thomson's essay on Shelley:

The only true or inspired poetry is always from within, not from without. The experience contained in it has been spiritually transmuted from lead into gold. It is severely logical, the most trivial of its adornments being subservient to, and suggested by, the dominant idea; any departure from whose dictates would be the "falsifying of a revelation." It is unadulterated with worldly wisdom, deference to prevailing opinions, mere talent or cleverness. Its anguish is untainted by the gall of bitterness, its joy isnever selfish, its grossness is never obscene. It perceives always the profound identity underlying all surface differences. It is a living organism, not a dead aggregate, and its music is the expression of the law of its growth; so that it could no more be set to a different melody than could a rose-tree be consummated with lilies or violets. It is most philosophic when most enthusiastic, the clearest light of its wisdom being shed from the keenest fire of its love. It is a synthesis not arithmetical, but algebraical; that is to say, its particular subjects are universal symbols, its predicates, universal laws: hence it is infinitely suggestive. It is ever-fresh wonder at the infinite mystery, ever-young faith in the eternal soul. Whatever be its mood, we feel that it is not self-possessed but God-possessed; whether the God came down serene and stately as Jove, when, a swan, he wooed Leda; or with overwhelming might insupportably burning, as when he consumed Semele.

Criticism deals with ideas that relate to life, and when written with ecstasy on human topics and not on technique it is poetry. The passage in Shelley'sDefense of Poetry, beginning with the words "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments, etc.," as well as the conclusion of Poe's essay onThe Poetic Principleare poetry. The critics here were poets in their prose criticism, no less than in their rhymed lyrics.

As the reader will fathom by this time, my aim is to free poetry from its bondage to requirements that were thought essential to it. I object most emphatically to demands for rhyme, metre, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, parallelism, repetition of word or phrase or line, tropes or figures of speech, poetical diction, and any form of pattern. The poet has the right to use any of the above instruments as he sees fit, whenever he thinks they enhance the ecstasy in his work. But no critic has a right to lay down a definition of poetry and insist that metre or rhythmmust be employed by a poet. Professor Mackail in hisOxford Lectures on Poetrydefines poetry as patterned language, formally and technically, adding that the technical essence of the pattern is the repeat, and that when there is no repeat there is technically no poetry. If this definition were true, then passages in the Bible full of poetry, which use no parallelism, would not be poetry. The pattern does not make the poem, it often ruins it. While it is true that when excited we repeat expressions and become rhythmical, we do not do so with regularity and uniformity. How puerile many poems by savages, and even by the early civilized Babylonians and Egyptians, sound because the first impediment of art, the repeat, is employed, and a phrase is repeatedad nauseamlike the words of a child learning how to talk. (!)

When we shake off our subservience to the pattern in poetry we shall have little use for the numerous works on the art of writing poetry. We shall find that many of the old books on poetry written with much learning by scholars and poets, like Aristotle, Horace, Vida, Scaliger, Vossius, Fabricius, Boileau, Pope, Opitz, Gottsched, Dante, are in part obsolete. I do not mean that these worthy works have all to be thrown on the scrap heap. But they laid down absurd rules as to how to write poetry and how to determine it; they sought to confine it by rules gleaned from older poets and insisted future poets obey these rules. Yet great poets, who never even read them, disregarded all their rules and created great poetry.

The chief thing that can be said for these critics is that they excel the moderns in scholarship. These learned men represent an almost extinct class, men who knew all the classics and all the books of Europe. They make usregret that the day of the man of learning is over, especially at a time when so many ignorant poets and critics and reviewers discuss and decide emphatically on many matters wherein a little learning is not a dangerous thing.

[42-A]The italics are mine.

[52-A]"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge." Wordsworth. "The atmosphere wherein all the arts exist is poetry." Wilhelm A. Ambros:The Boundaries of Music and Poetry.

Wordsworth believed that the language used by people in poetry should be that of the natural language of men under the influence of their feelings and that the diction of metrical poetry should differ in no wise from that of prose. Yet the only writers who use the natural diction of men are novelists, prose dramatists and short story writers, and, curiously enough, because they did not write verse, it has not often been suspected that these men were poets. Wordsworth's views are really proofs that poetry is found in prose, for the prose writers comply with his requirements of using in their compositions the natural conversation of men under the influence of natural feelings. They also comply with Wordsworth's definition of poetry, recording "emotions recollected in tranquillity."

Hazlitt has ably summed up the influence of the French Revolution on Wordsworth. Our poet did away with mythological references, with tales about legendary characters. He wrote about the emotions of the common people and introduced no far-fetched metaphors, nor made pedantic allusions.

Wordsworth, however, did not claim, as Coleridge thought he did, that the language of verse poetry must be that of ignorant people. Wordsworth never asserted that he wanted the poets to use the language of peasants, except when peasants were portrayed and represented as speaking. He simply protested against stilted, artificiallanguage in verse poetry. He held the use of such language in verse poetry to be ridiculous, as it was in prose. He was not an exponent of prose poetry, even though he laid little stress on the importance of metre. As the authors of the article on Wordsworth in theEncyclopedia Britannicastate, the farthest he went in defense of prose structure in poetry was to say that if the words in verse happened to be in the order of prose, they were not necessarily prosaic in the sense of unpoetic. He did not (unfortunately) try to eliminate metre in poetry. He no doubt agreed with Coleridge's own defense of meter in theBiographia Literaria. He did not write against his own theory, for he always employed metre and—except in some ballads—a diction that was even literary.

Though both Wordsworth and Coleridge were not overawed by the necessity of metre in poetry, they believed in its use, and were opposed to prose poetry. Coleridge, however, wrote a prose poemThe Wanderings of Cainand some of his essays are prose poetry. Coleridge also devoted an entire chapter in hisBiographia Literariato the defense of metre as a vehicle for poetry. He attributes the origin of metre to the fact that the mind makes a conscious effort to hold passion in check by fettering it with regular numbers. On the contrary, this conscious check is due to imitation of old examples, to fear in defying the critics, for the natural language of passion is irregular rhythm, and it is impatient of being confined in regular, artificial numbers. Coleridge thinks the effect of metre is "to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of the general feelings and the attention" by the continued excitement of surprise. I submit that metre often distracts the attention from the poem's real object, which is to depict ecstasy. Metre often diverts our ear to the singsong tone in which the emotions arecouched. Instead of adding to the vivacity and susceptibility of the feelings it really makes us suspect that the poet is not sincere, for the man of emotions expresses them spontaneously and does not trick them out in pattern. Next, Coleridge assumes that because of custom, metre must have some property in common with poetry. This argument cannot stand when we take into consideration the innumerable emotional passages that have been written in prose. A custom is only a passing practice, and free verse writers have abandoned the custom of writing in metre and in many cases have produced good poetry. Lastly, our critic thinks that every poet is impelled "to seek unity by harmonious adjustment, and thus establishing the principle, that all the parts of an organized whole must be assimilated to the more important and essential parts." But why assume that there is no unity of harmonious adjustment in an emotional passage in prose? Or why identify such unity with a metrical pattern? Isn't a Psalm in the Bible a unity of harmonious adjustment? Even if the essential part of a poetic piece tends to assume a certain pattern it does not mean that the whole piece should be given a patterned form. Some day it will be recognized that a long composition recording different emotions is really unaesthetic in a uniform pattern.

"As to the accents of words," says Bacon, in hisAdvancement of Learning, Book VI, Ch. I, "there is no necessity for taking notice of so trivial a thing; only it may be proper to intimate that these are observed with great exactness, whilst the accents of sentences are neglected; though it is nearly common to all mankind to sink the voice at the end of a period, to raise it in interrogation, and the like."

This passage is the first attack in English on metre.

It was Whitman who gave the death blow to metre. Hebrought poetry back to rhythmical prose, and is the greatest liberator poetry has ever had. He demonstrated that an entire volume might be written in rhythmical prose (with the lines broken up), and that the product could be the highest poetry. HisLeaves of Grassignored all the rules laid down in various books on poetics. Whitman has done more than most critics to convey to the world what poetry really is.

"In my opinion," says Whitman, "the time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between prose and poetry. I say the latter is henceforth to win and maintain its character regardless of rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic, spondee, dactyl, &c., and that even if rhyme and those measurements continue to furnish the medium for inferior writers and themes (especially for persiflage and the comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and anyhow), the truest and greatestPoetry(while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion."

We have long been laboring under the mischievous Aristotelian division of poetry into Epic, Dramatic and Lyric, and critics have exhausted themselves trying to determine which of these was the highest form of poetry.

As a matter of fact, the epic poem was only the primitive author's method of writing a poetical novel centering around wars; or a later poet's imitation of that form. The dramatic poem was another way of telling a story without introducing much narration or description. Poetry does not inhere in an epic of Homer or a play of Sophocles by virtue of the form, but because of the emotionsdescribed, and similar descriptions of emotions are to be found in our fiction and prose plays.

Again we have followed the ancients in subdividing lyric poetry into elegy, pastoral, ode, satire, idyll. The moderns introduced the sonnet, the ballade, the ballad and other forms. These divisions have perverted our knowledge as to the nature of poetry. Any one can make a similar classification of the poetry in prose, but it is useless to do so. Poetry is recorded emotion and depicts various characteristics. The Song of Deborah is a war song, a hymn and a satire, all in one.

Professor Posnett in hisComparative Literatureprotested long before Croce against these artificial divisions in poetry.

Poetry is the voice of excited man; it is as Baumgarten said—"perfect sensitive speech," a definition that Croce regards as probably the best ever given of poetry, while Saintsbury scoffs at it. It is immaterial whether the rhythm is there or not. Prose is always poetry when it is sensitized. Nietzsche, himself a great poet, also saw this. "Let it be observed," said Nietzsche, "that the great masters of prose have almost always been poets as well, whether openly, or only in secret and for the closet; and in truth one only writes good prosein view of poetry." He names Leopardi, Landor, Emerson and Merimée among the great prose writers who were poets. We can add many other writers of essays, dialogues, and criticisms to complement his list.

"The distinction between poetry and prose cannot be justified," said Croce. "Poetry is the language of sentiment; prose of intellect; but since the intellect is also sentiment, in its concretion and reality, so all prose has a poetical side." "There exists poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry." Poetical material permeatesthe souls of all; any expression of it in verse or prose, in painting or music, is poetry. Since all poetry is expression and all expression lyric, the divisions of different kinds of poetry into epic, dramatic, etc., or different divisions of one poem into scenes, books, chapters, acts, stanzas, paragraphs, are of little importance, and are matters of convenience.

Poetry is essentially lyrical. There is no such thing as dramatic or epic poetry. All poetry is the emotional outcry of the poet or his characters. We may have an emotion recorded in a separate poem called a lyric, or in a speech in a composition divided into acts, following certain rules and known as a drama. Similarly the speeches in epic poems are lyrics. The poetry of Homer or Shakespeare is not epic or dramatic, for poetry is just an emotional outburst. Andromache's speeches and Hamlet's soliloquies could have appeared alone and they would have been considered lyrics; they remain lyrics even in the body of a long composition. The emotional passages in all prose works are also lyrical poetry. There is really only one kind of poetry, lyrical poetry, for all poems are emotional outbursts of an individual. Every imaginative literary composition, whether in verse or prose, is made up of lyrical poems, more or less.

One should no more look for a chapter on the drama in a book like this dealing with poetry than for a treatise on the novel. A drama, considered merely as a series of scenes bound together by a plot in a fit manner to be presented on the stage to move people, and based on rules that relate to economy of words, concentration of facts and strikingness of action, is a performance that has a technique of its own; the dramatist is a poet only by virtue of the ecstasy he puts in the work. Considered in its primary significance as a performance where action isthe chief feature, the drama becomes poetry in those parts where the action and emotion are concentrated.

It is, however, often difficult to extract scenes from the play, as they lose in effectiveness by being thus separated. But the fact remains that there is no such thing as dramatic poetry, for the essence of all poetry is its lyricism. Dramatic scenes contain the lyric cries of thedramatis personæ. Action is but the emotional disturbances of the characters and no longer merely means violent conduct, surprises, battles, duels, suicides, murders. All great novels have dramatic scenes and they are often as exuberant in poetry as are similar scenes in plays. We no longer regard as tragedies only those plays in verse where a virtuous person of high degree is in a frightful predicament because of unjust and unlooked-for defeat with fate. No, in spite of Aristotle, the suffering of even a wicked person of low station, depicted as due to his own fault as of Hurstwood inSister Carrie, and described in prose narrative, is also tragedy. There is incidentally no such thing as a comic dramatic poem, but a comic scene may be poetic if it moves to ecstasy (not merely to farcic laughter), and if it is essentially lyrical. Comedy also appears in works of fiction in prose, and may be poetical. Moreover, most performances in prose dialogue or fiction present an admixture of tragic and comic.

Tragedy often presents lyric poems greater than any other work of literature; hence Aristotle and his imitators concluded that a verse tragedy was the highest form of poetry. This is not so. If Shakespeare and Sophocles lived in our day they might have written novels or essays, and I daresay with their genius those novels or essays would have been as good as their plays and would have contained as great poetry.

Our great poets do not owe their greatness to the useof the stereotyped literary metrical forms. A man may have a great gift for the use of these forms and not be a great poet, just as he may be a great poet and fall flat when they encumber him. Ruskin and Dickens were great poets, but when we say that their metrical compositions were not great poetry we merely mean that they were not adept in choosing rhymes and complying with metrical rules. To do this requires a distinct gift. An amateur selects forced rhymes and has no ear. Swinburne, besides being a great poet, had a distinct gift of creating melodious verse; but many parodists have shown that they also had this gift without being able to write poetry.

Mrs. Browning was a good poet both in verse and in prose. She wrote her love poems in prose in her letters to her husband, and in verse in the Portuguese sonnets which are nothing more than some of the letters put into metre and rhyme; there are some who think that the letters are the better poetry of the two. Her sentiments did not become poetry because they were put in sonnet form.

The following letter is poetry:

I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest, dearest, as if it were right rather to think of doing myself that good and relief, than of you who have to read all. But you spoil me into an excess of liberty by your tenderness. Best in the world! Oh—you help me to live—I am better and lighter since I have drawn near to you even on this paper—already I am better and lighter. And now I am going to dream of you . . . to meet you on some mystical landing place . . . in order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh—we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched inourselves. . . in the apple of our eye . . . in the quick of our heart . . . inwhatyou are andwhereyou are . . . my own dearest beloved! So you need not beafraid forme. We all look to our own, as I toyou; the thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, and, except in the first part, none of us be moved. True it is of me—not of you perhaps, certainly you are better than I in all things. Best in the world you are—no one is like you. Can you read what I have written? Do not love me less! Do you think that I cannot feel you love me, through all this distance? If you loved me less, I should know, without a word or sign. Because I live by your loving me! (June 24, 1846.)

It took the Greeks and Romans some time to learn that prose was the best medium for philosophy and history. Plato had the good sense to write in prose instead of following the ridiculous method of versifying of the early Greek philosophers, like Parmenides and Empedocles.

In the first century A.D. various Roman historians wrote of historical events in the form of epic poems. These are really histories with a little occasional glimmer of poetry. Thus we had Silius'sPontica, Valerius Flaccus'sArgonautica, Statius'sThebais, and Lucan'sPharsalia. The last two works were especially admired in the medieval ages when rhymed or metrical historical chronicles were the fashion, and they were favorites of Dante. Very few people to-day read these metrical histories. English literature also is full of metrical and rhymed histories, geographies, criticisms, scientific works, essays, etc. But no one reads Warner'sAlbion's England, Drayton'sPoly Olbion, or Daniel'sFirst Four Books of the Civil War. And Darwin's versifiedBotanical Gardenhas been a standing joke.

It is remarkable how past usages in literature influence us. The examples of Lucretius versifying philosophy in hisNature of Things, and that of Horace writing literary criticism in verse in hisArt of Poetry, have been fruitful of mischief. Even much of the lengthy works of Shelley,Byron and Browning would have been better had they been written in prose, and they would have lost none of their poetic qualities. The greatness of theRing and the Book,Don Juanand theRevolt of Islamremains when these works are translated into the prose of another language.

The French have perfected the art of poetical prose,[86-A]or prose poetry, probably more than any other nation. The reason may be that they have not been prolific of good poetry in verse, and have instead reserved their poetry for prose, a more natural medium than Alexandrine lines.

Fénelon was one of the first moderns who attacked verse. In two critical works,Dialogues on EloquenceandLetters to the French Academy(there is an English translation of both, out of print), he emphasized the insignificant part played by versification in poetry. He held that there was no true eloquence without a due mixture of poetry, that poetry was the very soul of eloquence. He said that there were many poets who were poetical without making verses, and he considered versification distinct from poetry. In his definition of poetry he excluded a consideration of versification. He thought the perfection of French verse impossible, that versification loses more than it gains by rhyme, and that French poets were cramped by versification. He wanted superfluous ornaments removed and the necessary parts turned into natural ornaments. Still he did not insist on a complete abandonment of rhyme, but wanted greater freedom. His biographer, St. Cyr, says that Fénelon wanted to abolish verse altogether in French poetry. Fénelon also wrote a novel in prose poetry in 1699,Télémaque. But prose poetry existed in France before him, in old romances like the story ofAucassin andNicoletteand in Bossuet's funeral orations. His example was followed by Sainte Pierre, inPaul and Virginia, by Prévost inManon Lescaut, by Rousseau and especially by Chateaubriand inAtala,The Genius of ChristianityandThe Martyrs. Unfortunately, Fénelon insisted in introducing the clichés of verse into prose; artificial and unnatural language hence ruined some of his work and assisted in bringing the term prose poetry into contempt.

The French have always regarded the poet in a broader sense than have the English. The article on poetry in the French Encyclopedia deals with prose poems as well as with verse poems. Victor Hugo in hisShakespeare, when he calls the lists of poets, mentions prose writers like Diderot, Rousseau, Balzac, Chateaubriand, George Sand, Le Sage and Cervantes. He who was himself a great poet knew that poetry did not depend on metre.

Eugene Véron, the great French critic, author of a valuable work onÆsthetics(fortunately translated into English), also takes a broad conception of the term poetry. He says that it would be absurd to deny Molière'sL'Avareis poetry because it is in prose, for poetical, creative imagination and personal emotions are at work here. He states that there was poetry in the story of Don Juan before Corneille put it in verse. Versification, he urges, does not constitute poetry. He sees that verse would not have improved such prose poems asPaul and Virginia,La Mare au Diable, orL'Oiseau(Michelet), and he places in the front rank of poetry passages from Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet (no doubt referring to some of the famous funeral orations) and Mirabeau. He also says it is impossible to refuse to see poetic character in the novel, for this deals with the creation of character and the portrayal of passions.

I do not wish to go into the prose poetry written by other nations, for every literature is full of it.

There is a growing tendency in England to encourage prose poetry.[88-A]De Quincey having made a special plea for impassioned prose is looked upon as the father of it, though there was prose poetry in English literature from the earliest times; Malory, Sidney, Sir Thomas Browne, Raleigh, Drummond, Milton, Bunyan, Taylor and Fuller were great prose poets.

John Stuart Mill and Lord Beaconsfield both recognized the utterly negligible rôle of metre in determining the nature of poetry. In an early essay, originally published before he was thirty and collected with another under the titlePoetry and Its Varieties, Mill gives us his definition of poetry. Guided by a statement of the author of theCorn Law Rhymes, Ebenezer Elliot, that poetry is impassioned truth, and by another definition from Blackwood's, that poetry is "man's thought tinged by his feelings," he says, "Every truth which a human being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry when shown through any impassioned medium, when invested with the coloring of joy, or grief, or pity, or affection, or admiration, or reverence, or awe, or even hatred, or terror: and, unless so colored, nothing, be it as interesting as it may, is poetry." There is nothing said in this definition about rhythm or metre, and indeed Mill regarded as the vulgarest of all any definition of poetry which confounds it with metrical composition.

An idea emotionally treated becomes poetry whether in prose or verse, whether rhythmical or not. Mill understoodthat, yet he erred when he assigned a minor rôle to the emotions excited by the incidents in prose fiction, though it is true that the emotions of excitement wakened by the mere novel of adventure are indicative of a lower order of poetry. It is to be regretted, however, that about five years later he somewhat modified his main views.

Prose poetry was consciously written by Lord Beaconsfield, who tells us in the early preface to his novel,Alroy, that he was trying to write rhythmical prose poetry in that novel. He did not always succeed, but throughout all his novels are found many excellent prose poems. He was writing prose poetry in the early eighteen thirties before Baudelaire, and in some of his tales, likePompanilla, we have prose poems. He often became bombastic, but he was a poet, nevertheless.

Later English critics have returned to the subject of prose poetry.

In hisAspects of PoetryProfessor John C. Shairp says that he grants "that the old limits between prose and poetry tend to disappear." He concludes his book with two chapters on prose poets, on Carlyle and Newman. And Courthope, worshipper of metre that he is, concludes hisHistory of English Poetrywith a chapter on the poetry in the Waverly Novels. We also recall that Bagehot could see little difference between Tennyson's novels in verse and George Eliot's novels in prose.

A great critic like Pater maintained the rights of the poet in prose. In his essay on Style he said "Prose will exert in due measure all the varied charms of poetry down to the rhythm which, as in Cicero, Michelet, or Newman, gives its musical value to every syllable."

The first lengthy and systematic plea for prose poetry I know of in English, outside of Disraeli's and De Quincey's modest apologies for writing in this manner,was made by David Masson in an essay onProse and Verse: De Quincey, published as a review of De Quincey in 1854. De Quincey's preface, pleading for impassioned prose, suggested Masson's essay. Masson had, however, dwelt on the poetic side of prose the year before in an article on Dallas'sPoetics, calledTheories of Poetry. Both of Masson's essays are to be found in hisWordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Other Essays. Masson very ingeniously asks why we are not allowed to write prose in the manner that Milton writes in verse, or in the manner of Æschylus in prose translation. He concludes that poetry and prose are not two entirely separate spheres, but intersecting and penetrating. To-day we go even farther than Masson and urge that prose, except in short lyrics when verse may be used, should be the sole language of passion and the imagination. He vindicates De Quincey's right to use impassioned prose; he quotes as an example of prose poetry a beautiful passage from the conclusion of Milton's pamphlet,Causes That Have Hindered the Reformation in England, and mentions especially Jean Paul Richter, the prose poet who was responsible for the prose poetry of two disciples, De Quincey and Carlyle. Richter'sChrist and the Universeis highly regarded by him as prose poetry.

Masson's prediction that the time was coming when the best prose should more resemble verse than it had done in the past, and that the best verse should not disdain a certain resemblance to prose, is being fulfilled. Remember Masson wrote before theLeaves of Grassappeared, and before the vogue of free verse.

Yet his viewpoint was severely criticized by a scholar like John Earle, whoseEnglish Prosecontains an attack on prose poetry. Earle says that prose poetry is found chiefly in ages of literary decadence like the LatinSilver Age in writers from Tacitus to Boethius. On the contrary, it is found as well in the golden ages of literature, as, for example, in Sidney'sArcadia, which he himself quotes from, in Plato, in Pascal, in Dante's prose. It is strange that this view of Earle's should still largely prevail. Poetry and prose are still regarded by academic scholars like Earle, Saintsbury, Courthope, Bosanquet Watts-Dunton and Gummere as two distinct branches of literature. Earle is right only when he objects to the clichés of verse in prose, but to-day we object to all clichés.

Poetic prose, however, should not be used on every occasion, but only when an ecstasy is to be expressed. And, above all, it should be avoided—and this is how prose poetry got into disrepute—in expressing sentimental emotions, commonplace ideas, and the merely popular. When we read in eloquent prose, the grand eulogies on the flag, on the purity and redeeming virtues of mother-love, on the dignity of toil, on the glory of dying for one's country, on the goodness of God, etc., themes which have been celebrated so often that they are nauseous to us because nothing new is said, then we see how ridiculous prose poetry may become.

But as Pater says—impassioned prose has become the special and opportune art of the modern world, and it can exert all the varied charms of poetry down to the rhythm.

"The muse of prose-literature," says Masson, "has been hardly dealt with. We see not why, in prose, there should not be much of that license in the fantastic, that measured riot, the right of whimsy, that unbalanced dalliance with the extreme and the beautiful, which the world allows, by prescription, to verse. Why may not prose chase forest-nymphs and see little green-eyed elves, and delight in peonies and musk-roses, and invoke the stars, and roll mists about the hills, and watch the sea thundering throughcaverns and dashing against the promontories? Why, in prose, quail from the grand or ghastly in the one hand, or blush with shame at too much of the exquisite on the other? Is Prose made of iron? Must it never weep, never laugh, never linger to look at a butterfly, never ride at a gallop over the downs?"

Yet George Moore, a great poet in prose himself, tells us in hisAvowalsthat the greatness of English genius does not appear in its prose, but in its poetry, i. e., in verse. The greatness of English geniusisin its poetry, but in the poetry of its prose as well as in the poetry of its verse. It appears in the ordinary dialect of its novels and prose plays.

As a matter of fact, poetic prose has always been used. It is found in the earliest as well as the later literature of every nation. The Bible, Oriental Literature, the medieval romances, early Saxon prose are full of it. It made a reappearance with renewed force in the romantic movement that spread over England, Germany and France in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries. In an age like the romantic, when the right to live and express emotions was pleaded, poetic prose, seeking restraint from metre, was especially appropriate. George Brandes has studied this movement in hisMain Currents. Many of the leading writers of the romantic period used impassioned prose. Saintsbury has found much poetry even in the prose of John Wilson, who is not much read, one who was to some extent an enemy of the romantic movement, and Saintsbury reprints in hisSpecimens of English Prose Style, Wilson'sThe Fairy's Funeral.

America has contributed greatly to the development of prose poetry. Hawthorne, Poe and Emerson were the first great masters in prose poetry we have had, and Idoubt if as poets they have been surpassed by any of our metrical verse writers. One of the finest poems in American literature is undoubtedly Hawthorne's reflections of his lonely life in the Ivory Tower, when he revisited his old chamber in Salem where he spent so many years. The famous passage from his diary, quoted in all big biographies, is as great a poem, though in prose.

Emerson's essays are studied with prose poems. I shall mention only one, the address to the poet, at the conclusion of the essay on "The Poet."

The Hawthorne passage is as follows:

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