but
art. So he became a pagan, and sought for firmness and delicacy in the
texture, while aiming to fill his verse with the fire of Swinburne, the
subtlety of Rossetti and the great, clear day-flame of Gautier. A
well-nigh impossible ideal; yet he cherished it for twice ten years, and
at forty had forsworn poetry for prose....

Then he read the masters of that "other harmony of prose" until he
dreamed of long, sweeping phrases, drumming with melody, cadences like
the humming of slow, uplifting walls of water tumbling on sullen
strands. He knew Sir Thomas Browne, and repeated with unction: "Now
since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of
Methusaleh, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn
all the strong and spacious buildings above it; and quietly rested
under the drums and tramplings of three conquests; what prince can
promise such diuturnity unto his relicks." ... He wondered if Milton, De
Quincey, Walter Pater or even Jeremy Taylor had made such sustained
music. He marvelled at the lofty structures of old seventeenth century
prose-men, and compared them with the chippy staccato of the modern
perky style, its smug smartness, its eternal chattering gallop. He
absorbed the quiet prose of Addison and Steele and swore it tasted like
dry sherry. Swift, he found brilliantly hard, often mannered; and he
loved Dr. Goldsmith, so bland, loquacious, welcoming. In Fielding's
sentences he heard the clatter of oaths; and when bored by the pulpy
magnificence of Pater's harmonies went back to Bunyan with his stern,
straightforward way. For Macaulay and his multitudinous prose, Cintras
conceived a special abhorrence, but could quote for you with unfailing
diction Sir William Temple's "Use of Poetry and Music," and its sweet
coda: "When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best, but
like a froward child that must be played with and humored to keep it
quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

Cintras had become enamoured with the English language, and emptied it
into his eyes from Chaucer to Stevenson. He most affected Charles Lamb
and Laurence Sterne; he also loved the Bible for its canorous prose,
and on hot afternoons as the boys lolled about his room, he thundered
forth bits of Job and the Psalms. Cintras was greatly beloved by the
gang, though it was generally conceded that he had as yet done nothing.
This is the way Berkeley put it, down at Cherierre's, where th