If the doctor prescribes quinine,- Jesuit's bark is exhibited.' Again, the trick of describing some queer abnormal state of mind half in the language of the faculty and half in that of the metaphysicians is directly the result of De Quincey's teaching. Poe was also clearly influenced a good deal both by Swift and by Defoe. It is true that he was usually more florid in his use of words than either of these writers, but not seldom he shows that the benefits they conferred upon our tongue were fully appreciated by him. In the travel stories there are indeed plenty of passages where the debt to Swift is most obvious.

Before we leave the subject of Poe's tales we must take care to point out that when we insist upon the original character of Poe's genius we do not mean to represent his name as one of the great names in our literature. In spite of his gift of originating, of his intense love of beauty in all its forms, in spite of his mastery over language—his style was at once precise and melodious, clear and yet hauntingly suggestive of hidden things—and in spite, too, of his power to avail himself of human knowledge and human experience in every form, his stories cannot be said to be really great as literature. They may dazzle or horrify or amaze for a moment, but of permanent delight they contain little or nothing. What is the reason?

The reason is, we believe, to be found in the fact that Poe's tales contain nothing of true human interest. They never touch the heart or even the mind in the highest sense. At their best they move, or rather bewilder, the emotions, but that is all. With all his genius, Poe's characters move one less than the heroes

and heroines of the most ordinary three-volume novel. His are not men and women, but phantoms seen in the red glare of an unwholesome imagination. He cannot, as could Mr. Stevenson, make Jekyll and Hyde real persons. The two William Wilsons in their fur cloaks 'come like shadows, so depart.' And hence Poe's tales, though so full of invention and of thick-coming fancies, of ingenious surprises, of brilliant execution, and of literary tours de force, in the end weary the reader. He feels that he is marching over a desert of dry sand. It is true that the sand is thickly specked with gold, that the mysteries of eve and of the dawn are with him, and that the mirage shows him its cloudcapped towers, its shining castles, and its glowing pageants of woods, wastes, and waters. It is not enough. He thirsts for the running streams, for the kindly works of men and oxen, for the wholesome faces of human creatures, and the homely charities of the green earth. Better the dullest, simplest, old-world story than these terrible phantasmagoria.

Of course certain of Poe's tales will always be read with delight for their ingenuity of plot and dexterity of style; but Poe can never hold even a second place among the band which numbers Scott and Miss Austen, Dickens and Thackeray-the sacred band of those who have made life brighter and more interesting by quickening human feeling and revealing man to himself by insight and sympathy.

121

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. 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 something divergent, almost antagonistic, to measure in the higher prose melody, 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.' But alas the period was not sustained. The river loses itself by the land. Landor 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 Pius 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 bâton and without a charger. He wants no fortress to protect him; he 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 Infi

nite' that ends the essay on 'Lord Rosse's Telescopes: '—

Angel, I will go no further. 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 again 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 Brama 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 Romanus' dissolves the pageant of his dreams. These symphonies 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 anyone, 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