The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson (read book .txt) 📕

the arithmetical measure of the verse, and the degree of regularity

in scansion, we see the laws of prosody to have one common purpose:

to keep alive the opposition of two schemes simultaneously

followed; to keep them notably apart, though still coincident; and

to balance them with such judicial nicety before the reader, that

neither shall be unperceived and neither signally prevail.

The rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. Here, too, we

write in groups, or phrases, as I prefer to call them, for the

prose phrase is greatly longer and is much more nonchalantly

uttered than the group in verse; so that not only is there a

greater interval of continuous sound between the pauses, but, for

that very reason, word is linked more readily to word by a more

summary enunciation. 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. It may be thought perhaps that this is a

quality of ease rather than a fresh difficulty; but such is the

inherently rhythmical strain of the English language, that the bad

writer—and must I take for example that admired friend of my

boyhood, Captain Reid?—the inexperienced writer, as Dickens in his

earlier attempts to be impressive, and the jaded writer, as any one

may see for himself, all tend to fall at once into the production

of bad blank verse. And here it may be pertinently asked, Why bad?

And I suppose it might be enough to answer that no man ever made

good verse by accident, and that no verse can ever sound otherwise

than trivial when uttered with the delivery of prose. But we can

go beyond such answers. The weak side of verse is the regularity

of the beat, which in itself is decidedly less impressive than the

movement of the nobler prose; and it is just into this weak side,

and this alone, that our careless writer falls. A peculiar density

and mass, consequent on the nearness of the pauses, is one of the

chief good qualities of verse; but this our accidental versifier,

still following after the swift gait and large gestures of prose,

does not so much as aspire to imitate. Lastly, since he remains

unconscious that he is making verse at all, it can never occur to

him to extract those effects of counterpoint and opposition which I

have referred to as the final grace and justification of verse,

and, I may add, of blank verse in particular.

4. Contents of the Phrase.—Here is a great deal of talk about

rhythm—and naturally; for in our canorous language rhythm is

always at the door. But it must not be forgotten that in some

languages this element is almost, if not quite, extinct, and that

in our own it is probably decaying. The even speech of many

educated Americans sounds the note of danger. I should see it go

with something as bitter as despair, but I should not be desperate.

As in verse no element, not even rhythm, is necessary, so, in prose

also, other sorts of beauty will arise and take the place and play

the part of those that we outlive. The beauty of the expected beat

in verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and more lawless

melody, patent as they are to English hearing, are already silent

in the ears of our next neighbours; for in France the oratorical

accent and the pattern of the web have almost or altogether

succeeded to their places; and the French prose writer would be

astounded at the labours of his brother across the Channel, and how

a good quarter of his toil, above all invita Minerva, is to avoid

writing verse. So wonderfully far apart have races wandered in

spirit, and so hard it is to understand the literature next door!

Yet French prose is distinctly better than English; and French

verse, above all while Hugo lives, it will not do to place upon one

side. What is more to our purpose, a phrase or a verse in French

is easily distinguishable as comely or uncomely. There is then

another element of comeliness hitherto overlooked in this analysis:

the contents of the phrase. Each phrase in literature is built of

sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound

suggests, echoes, demands, and harmonises with another; and the art

of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature.

It used to be a piece of good advice to all young writers to avoid

alliteration; and the advice was sound, in so far as it prevented

daubing. None the less for that, was it abominable nonsense, and

the mere raving of those blindest of the blind who will not see.

The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sentence, depends

implicitly upon alliteration and upon assonance. The vowel demands

to be repeated; the consonant demands to be repeated; and both cry

aloud to be perpetually varied. You may follow the adventures of a

letter through any passage that has particularly pleased you; find

it, perhaps, denied a while, to tantalise the ear; find it fired

again at you in a whole broadside; or find it pass into congenerous

sounds, one liquid or labial melting away into another. And you

will find another and much stranger circumstance. Literature is

written by and for two senses: a sort of internal ear, quick to

perceive ‘unheard melodies’; and the eye, which directs the pen and

deciphers the printed phrase. Well, even as there are rhymes for

the eye, so you will find that there are assonances and

alliterations; that where an author is running the open A, deceived

by the eye and our strange English spelling, he will often show a

tenderness for the flat A; and that where he is running a

particular consonant, he will not improbably rejoice to write it

down even when it is mute or bears a different value.

Here, then, we have a fresh pattern—a pattern, to speak grossly,

of letters—which makes the fourth preoccupation of the prose

writer, and the fifth of the versifier. At times it is very

delicate and hard to perceive, and then perhaps most excellent and

winning (I say perhaps); but at times again the elements of this

literal melody stand more boldly forward and usurp the ear. It

becomes, therefore, somewhat a matter of conscience to select

examples; and as I cannot very well ask the reader to help me, I

shall do the next best by giving him the reason or the history of

each selection. The two first, one in prose, one in verse, I chose

without previous analysis, simply as engaging passages that had

long re-echoed in my ear.

‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and

unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but

slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run

for, not without dust and heat.’ {4} Down to ‘virtue,’ the current

S and R are both announced and repeated unobtrusively, and by way

of a grace-note that almost inseparable group PVF is given entire.

{5} The next phrase is a period of repose, almost ugly in itself,

both S and R still audible, and B given as the last fulfilment of

PVF. In the next four phrases, from ‘that never’ down to ‘run

for,’ the mask is thrown off, and, but for a slight repetition of

the F and V, the whole matter turns, almost too obtrusively, on S

and R; first S coming to the front, and then R. In the concluding

phrase all these favourite letters, and even the flat A, a timid

preference for which is just perceptible, are discarded at a blow

and in a bundle; and to make the break more obvious, every word

ends with a dental, and all but one with T, for which we have been

cautiously prepared since the beginning. The singular dignity of

the first clause, and this hammer-stroke of the last, go far to

make the charm of this exquisite sentence. But it is fair to own

that S and R are used a little coarsely.

‘In Xanady did Kubla Khan (KANDL)

A stately pleasure dome decree, (KDLSR)

Where Alph the sacred river ran, (KANDLSR)

Through caverns measureless to man, (KANLSR)

Down to a sunless sea.’ {6} (NDLS)

Here I have put the analysis of the main group alongside the lines;

and the more it is looked at, the more interesting it will seem.

But there are further niceties. In lines two and four, the current

S is most delicately varied with Z. In line three, the current

flat A is twice varied with the open A, already suggested in line

two, and both times (‘where’ and ‘sacred’) in conjunction with the

current R. In the same line F and V (a harmony in themselves, even

when shorn of their comrade P) are admirably contrasted. And in

line four there is a marked subsidiary M, which again was announced

in line two. I stop from weariness, for more might yet be said.

My next example was recently quoted from Shakespeare as an example

of the poet’s colour sense. Now, I do not think literature has

anything to do with colour, or poets anyway the better of such a

sense; and I instantly attacked this passage, since ‘purple’ was

the word that had so pleased the writer of the article, to see if

there might not be some literary reason for its use. It will be

seen that I succeeded amply; and I am bound to say I think the

passage exceptional in Shakespeare—exceptional, indeed, in

literature; but it was not I who chose it.

‘The BaRge she sat iN, like a BURNished throNe

BURNT oN the water: the POOP was BeateN gold,

PURPle the sails and so PUR* Fumed that * per

The wiNds were love-sick with them.’ {7}

It may be asked why I have put the F of ‘perfumed’ in capitals; and

I reply, because this change from P to F is the completion of that

from B to P, already so adroitly carried out. Indeed, the whole

passage is a monument of curious ingenuity; and it seems scarce

worth while to indicate the subsidiary S, L, and W. In the same

article, a second passage from Shakespeare was quoted, once again

as an example of his colour sense:

‘A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops

I’ the bottom of a cowslip.’ {8}

It is very curious, very artificial, and not