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 henceforth, to the perfect taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and anyhow), the truest and greatest Poetry (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 emotions described, 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 his Comparative Literature protested 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 prose in view of poetry." He names Leopardi, Landor, Emerson and Merimée among the great prose 

 Prev. P 49/215 next