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,
but it must not be verse. A single heroic line may very well pass
and not disturb the somewhat larger stride of the prose style; but
one following another will produce an instant impression of
poverty, flatness, and disenchantment. The same lines delivered
with the measured utterance of verse would perhaps seem rich in
variety. By the more summary enunciation proper to prose, as to a
more distant vision, these niceties of difference are lost. A
whole verse is uttered as one phrase; and the ear is soon wearied
by a succession of groups identical in length. The prose writer,
in fact, since he is allowed to be so much less harmonious, is
condemned to a perpetually fresh variety of movement on a larger
scale, and must never disappoint the ear by the trot of an accepted
metre. And this obligation is the third orange with which he has
to juggle, the third quality which the prose writer must work into
his pattern of words.
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