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