is and the preceding lecture, Gentlemen, I have enforced at some
length the opinion that to understand the many essential differences
between verse and prose we must constantly bear in mind that verse, being
metrical, keeps the character originally imposed on it by musical
accompaniment and must always, however far the remove, be referred back
to its origin and to the emotion which music excites.

Mr George Bernard Shaw having to commit his novel "Cashel Byron's
Profession" to paper in a hurry, chose to cast it in blank verse as being
more easily and readily written so: a performance which brilliantly
illuminates a half-truth. Verse--or at any rate, unrhymed iambic
verse--is easier to write than prose, if you care to leave out the
emotion which makes verse characteristic and worth writing. I have
little doubt that, had he chosen to attempt it, Mr Shaw would have found
his story still more ductile in the metre of "Hiawatha." But the
experiment proves nothing: or no more than that, all fine art costing
labour, it may cost less if burlesqued in a category not its own.

Let me take an example from a work with which you are all familiar--"The
Student's Handbook to the University and Colleges of Cambridge." On
p. 405 we read:--

The Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos is divided into ten sections,
A, A2, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I. A student may take either one or two
sections at the end of his second year of residence, and either one or
two more sections at the end of his third or fourth year of residence;
or he may take two sections at the end of his third year only. Thus
this Tripos can be treated either as a divided or as an undivided
Tripos at the option of the candidate.

Now I do not hold that up to you for a model of prose. Still, lucidity
rather than emotion being its aim, I doubt not that the composer spent
pains on it; more pains than it would have cost him to convey his
information metrically, thus:--

There is a Tripos that aspires to blend
The Medieval and the Modern tongues
In one red burial (Sing Heavenly Muse!)
Divided into sections A, A2,
B, C, D, E, F, G and H and I.
A student may take either one or two
(With some restrictions mention'd in a footnote)
At th' expiration of his second year:
Or of his third, or of his fourth again
Take one or two; or of his third alone
Take two together. Thus this tripos is
(Like nothing in the