melody is heard at its best in sentences like the following:

"The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony."

"Its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life." (Perhaps suggested by such Shakespearean lines as M.N.D. 3. 2. 391: "Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams"; Sonn. 33. 3: "Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy"; K. John 3. I. 77, etc.).

Still more striking than these are the two sentences cited on p. ix.

It will be observed that sentences of this order have a sustained flight, like that of the bird of paradise, which is fabled never to touch the earth, or rather, if we may adapt Jeremy Taylor's simile, already quoted, like the impulsive soaring of the lark, which ever and anon returns to the meadow whence it sprang, and does not at once shake itself free of its lowly surroundings, but which exults in its spacious liberty when the earth has fairly been left behind, and with glad pulsations lifts itself higher and higher into the immeasurable profound of air. Sentences like those quoted above, when examined with reference to their pauses, are seen to have no natural cæsura near the end. They spring through a short clause, or a succession of them, to a coign of vantage, and thence set out on an aërial journey which halts not till it ends. No antithesis marks their close, no qualifying clause slipped in almost at the last moment, no suspension which throws the verb, with an abrupt break, to the very end, no explicative remark intended merely to confirm or extend that which precedes, no correlative added for the sake of more perfect balance. Examples of such broken endings might readily be adduced, and I select from Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies an instance to illustrate each of the foregoing heads:

Strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save." "A broken metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly."

"And sown in us daily, and by us, as instantly as may be, choked."

"Only so far as may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his best friends."

"We gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the night-dew of the grave."

It is impossible to lay down any rule for the construction of prose rhythms. If such a rule could be deduced, the rhythm would no longer be varied and indeterminate. Still an examination of the final sentences of Shelley's paragraphs is instructive with reference to the means by which the continuous harmony is so long maintained. When the final clause exceeds the ordinary length and is interrupted by no appreciable cæsura, it will frequently be found that it contains a succession of two or more prepositional phrases, more rarely that the place of the first prepositional phrase is occupied by a noun, the subject or object of a verb, with or without one or more attributive adjectives, or that the second prepositional phrase is adverbial in its function. Nor is it alone in the final sentences of Shelley's paragraphs that such constructions appear to be typical. Other instances are :— "Become as generals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts."

"And gathers a sort of reduplication from the community."

"It must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations."

"The receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought."

"To have abdicated this throne of their widest dominion."

"Out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms."

But the moment a serious attempt is made to establish the universality of such a supposed rule, that moment disappointment is likely to overtake the observer, and to nip in the bud any future endeavors to determine even the most elementary laws of verbal harmony in prose. Yet, confined within proper limits, such endeavors need not be unprofitable; they should be judged in the light of the inquiries, extending over centuries, and still continued, into the rhythms of Lysias and Demosthenes, and it should not be hastily concluded that what is advantageous in Greek becomes a vanity and a delusion in English.

Shelley's attachment to a few favorite images leads him, as has been already intimated, into repetition. As the most intricate musical compositions are built up out of the few notes of the scale, so poets, even when writing prose, appear to have a few simple elements to which they frequently return, and to vary and modulate upon a few primary chords. Among Shelley's key-words are 'harmony,' 'harmonious,' 'rhythm,' 'order or rhythm,' rhythm and order.' Akin to this practice, but yet different from it, is that of repeating certain syllables or sounds, simply because the echo of them still lingers in the ear. Whether Shelley's use of the figure of polysyndeton, especially in the case of and,' is to be referred to this cause, may be allowed to remain an open question. But other instances are less doubtful, and can only be regarded as blemishes, since they transgress a higher euphonic law. Such are:

"Film of familiarity (42 16).

66

Affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry" (152).

"An equal sensibility to the influence of the senses (21 30).

"As its forms survived in the unreformed worship of modern Europe" (32 18).

But especially the multiplication of words ending in the

sound of -sion, preceded by a vowel, such as the following:

"The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population" (27 26).

"He omits the observation of conditions still more important, and more is lost than gained by the substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the loving impersonations of the truth of human passion" (17 25-30); cf. Sidney, Defense 53 31, note.

Another form of repetition is that of identical words, such as 'alleged' (31 4, 7), 'practice' (17 3, 4). Not to be confounded with these are such as selectest: selectest (23 28), and partial: partially (24 1,2), which illustrate a rhetorical device.

Alliteration in prose is due to the same retention and unconscious reverberation of a sound, this time fragmentary and initial, a single phonetic element instead of a group of such. Shelley does not escape this fault, or rather he indulges a common and pardonable propensity beyond the limits which are imposed by the severe taste of certain critics. "The mask and the mantle" (305) would almost pass unnoticed, and "the fragrance of all the flowers of the field" (21 20) can be readily condoned. But the following will not so easily escape remark :

"It overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness" (21 17).

"A monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice," etc. (171).

"The jury which sits in judgment upon a poet must be composed of his peers; it must be impanelled by Time.... A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved," etc. (11 27-12 2). Perhaps the

misquotation in 35 27-8 owes its form to the instinct for alliteration, and 'feasting' becomes mirth,' because 'mourning' had preceded.

One feature of a poetical style Shelley avoids, the introduction of compound words, such as Sidney loved and abounded in (cf. Sidney, Defense 55 25, note, and the Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv). A half-dozen practically exhaust the list all-penetrating' (46 22), 'ever-changing' (26), 'ever-repeated' (17 28), 'low-thoughted' (45 31), 'manysided' (196), and 'owl-winged' (394). Of these, 'lowthoughted' is a quotation, and 'owl-winged' is the only other that has a decidedly poetic air.

:

Before leaving the subject of Shelley's style, a single defect and a compensating merit must be noticed. The defect is that the poet as prosaist is sometimes ungrammatical. The congruence of a verb with its subject, for example, is not always observed. Examples are:

"As the temporary dress . . ., which cover without concealing," etc. (12 29).

"With which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected" (19 22).

"The chosen delicacy of expressions etc. (245).

are as a mist,"

"His apotheosis of Beatrice, and the gradations . . . is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry" (29 3-8).

"After one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to share," etc. (33 10-12).

"The accumulation of the materials of external life exceed," etc. (38 11).

The verbal noun uniformly takes an object: "The establishing a relation," etc. (17 23; cf. 17 24, 34 12-15).

A peculiar confusion is illustrated by the following: "“Each division in the art was made perfect and was disci

plined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards the other" (16 17-20).