and say that the capabilities of any form of Prose Fiction are the same as those of the equivalent form of Narrative Poetry, whatever that may be, excepting in as far as the substitution of prose for verse implies necessary abatements or differences,

Verse or Prose, then-the matter of importance lies in that alternative. What can Verse do in narrative fiction that Prose can not; and, on the other hand, are there any compensating respects, in which, in the same business, Prose has the advantage of Verse?

In the interest of these questions, I might first point out that it is not so easy as it seems to say what is merely prose, and what is decidedly verse. Where the printer helps us, by dividing and arranging lines according to their metrical structure, and by leaving wide margins and intervals, we recognise verse at once; but beyond that point, and in among densely-packed prose itself, there may be snatches, and even considerable passages, which are good unrhymed verse to the ear, and have all the effect of such, though, for lack of the printer's help, the fact is not perceived, and though the author himself, not writing with a view to certain mechanical arrangements, may hardly have intended it. Conventionally, indeed, as soon as we get a little way

clear out of rhyme, we draw a broad mechanical line, and then at haphazard call all on one side of this line verse, and all on the other side prose; although in nature and in all natural effect the transition may be far more gradual, and much of what we call prose is really verse, acting as such on the mind, though latent and unaccredited.

Setting aside this consideration, however, and accepting the ordinary conventional distinction between verse and what we call prose, but which the ancients more significantly called oratio soluta, or "loosened speech"-a distinction which would be perceptible, although the penman or the printer were to neglect those mechanical arrangements which indicate it, in the main, so conveniently-let us proceed with our questions.

What can Verse do, or what has Verse been found to do, in the business of narrative fiction, which Prose cannot do, or has not been found to do so easily? I cannot profess here to exhaust this question; but a few hints may serve our immediate purpose.

Versification itself is an art, mastery in which wins independent admiration, and is a source of independent intellectual pleasure; and, cæteris paribus, a work delivered over to the human race in verse has a greater chance, on this account, of being

preserved, treated as a classic, and read again and again, or at least spoken of as if it were. Verse embalms and conserves the contained meaning, whatever may be its intrinsic merit. When, however, a writer who has attained the art of verse by following a constitutional tendency to it, or who has recourse to it in any particular instance from a knowledge of its efficacy, does take the trouble of throwing a fictitious narrative into the form of verse, it is almost obvious that he sets out with a predetermination that the matter shall be of a rich or serious kind, about the very best in its order that he is able to produce; and also that, in consequence of the slower rate at which he must proceed, and the greater care and ingenuity which he must use, the matter, even without such predetermination, will tend to elevate and refine itself, when it is once in flow. Hence, in general, though not universally, high, serious, and very heroic themes of poetic interest beg, and almost claim, by right of fitness and precedent, to be invested with the garb of verse; leaving to prose such as are of plainer or rougher, or less sublime and impassioned character.

But, beyond this, and apart from mere custom, as determining the choice of the vehicle beforehand, Verse, from its own nature as Verse, exercises an

influence in the origination or genesis of the matter that shall seek conveyance through it,-forms that matter, ere it leaves the mind that invents it, according to subtle laws of affinity with its own mechanism and its conscious powers. Verse welcomes certain kinds of matter, and proclaims its adaptation for them; it rejects other kinds of matter, wishes to be excused from them, is intolerant of them if forced upon it, and resents the intrusion by the uncouthness of the result. To speak briefly, the kind of matter for which Verse has an affection and for which it is fitted, is that which is in its nature general, permanent, fundamental, ever interesting, least variable by time or by place. The primary human emotions and relations, and the acts that spring from them and illustrate them; the permanent facts of nature and of life; the everlasting generalities of human thought and human aspiration and difficulty—these are what lay claim to be sung or chanted, while the rest may be simply said. By a law of opposites, Verse, the most highly conditioned, or, as we say, the most artificial form of speech, lays claim to matter the least conditioned in fact, and the most radically incorporate with the primitive basis of nature. The scene of every poem must, of course, be laid in some place and in some

time; every poem must carry in it historic elements and references to contemporaneous particulars which are interesting to posterity; the costume and the circumstance must be Greek, or Roman, or Mediæval, or English, or Spanish, according to the nativity and education of the writer; nor is there any great narrative poem which has not a tinge in it of local and national colour, and is not full of social minutiæ. It is nevertheless true that Verse, narrative or other, seeks the general under the particular, the constant under the varying. Moving as it does on wings, it may descry all and take cognizance of all, but it can rest but here and there on the tips and pinnacles of things. In Tennyson's narrative phantasy of the "Princess," we have local and temporary colour to some extent the English lawn in the prologue, and the college of "violet-hooded doctors," and their feminine lectures on modern geology in the tale; but how elemental and air-hung the whole story in its beauty, as compared with what would probably have been the result had a similar phantasy been attempted in prose!

It is but an extension of this remark to say, that there is an inherent fitness in Verse for what is highly ideal or poetic intellectually, and for what is deeply impassioned. It is from no mere accident,