refined pleasure than that derived from the rhythmical beat of verse.
Take, for instance, such works as _The Ring and the Book_ and _Aurora
Leigh_. Is there anything whatever to be gained by the relentless
drumming, under the surface of these imaginative narratives, of the
stolid blank verse? Would not such compositions have gained by being
written in pure poetical prose? The quality which at present directs
writers to choosing verse-forms for poetical expression, apart from the
traditions, is the need of condensation, and the sense of proportion
which the verse-structure enforces and imparts. But I should look
forward to the writing of prose where the epithets should be as
diligently weighed, the cadence as sedulously studied; where the mood
and the subject would indicate inevitably the form of the sentence, the
alternation of languid, mellifluous streams of scented and honied words
with brisk, emphatic, fiery splashes of language. Indeed, in reading
even great poetry, is one not sometimes sadly aware, as in the case of
Shelley or Swinburne, that the logical sequence of thought is loose and
indeterminate, and that this is concealed from one by the reverberating
beat of metre, which gives a false sense of structure to a mood that is
really invertebrate?

What I am daily hoping to see is the rise of a man of genius, with a
rich poetical vocabulary and a deep instinct for poetical material, who
will throw aside resolutely all the canons of verse, and construct
prose lyrics with a perfect mastery of cadence and melody.

The experiment was made by Walt Whitman, and in a few of his finest
lyrics, such as _Out of the Cradle endlessly rocking_, one gets the
perfection of structure and form. But he spoilt his vehicle by a
careless diffuseness, by a violent categorical tendency, and by other
faults which may be called faults of breeding rather than faults of
art--a ghastly volubility, an indiscretion, a lust for description
rather than suggestion; and thus he has numbered no followers, and only
a few inconsiderable imitators.

I think, too, that Whitman was, in position, just a little ahead, as I
have indicated, of the taste of his time; and he was not a good enough
artist to enforce the beauty and the possibilities of his experiment
upon the world.

There is, moreover, this further difficulty in the way of the literary
experimentalist. Whitman, in virtue of his strength, his vitality, his
perception, his individuality, rat