Prose

PROSE, the plain speech of mankind, when written or corn posed without reference to the rules of verse. It has been usual to distinguish prose very definitely from poetry (q.v.). Ronsard said that to him prose and poetry were "mortal enemies." But "poetry" is a more or less metaphysical term, which cannot be used without danger. For instance, an ill-inspired work in rhyme cannot be said to be poetry, and yet most certainly is not prose. On the other hand, a work of highly wrought non-metrical writ ing is often called a prose-poem. This shows that the antithesis between prose and poetry is not complete. Prose, therefore, is best defined as comprising all forms of careful literary expression which are not metrically versified, and hence the definition from prorsus (direct or straight), the notion being that it is straight and plain, and is used for stating precisely that which is true in reason or fact.

Prose, however, is not everything that is loosely said. True, it is the result of conversation, but that conversation is not neces sarily, nor often, prose. Prose is not the negation of all laws of speech; it rejects merely those which depend upon metre. What its laws are is not easy to say. But this is plain ; as prose depends on the linking of successive sentences, the first requirement is that these sentences should be lucidly arranged. In prose, that the meaning should be given is the primal necessity. But as it is found that a dull, clumsy, monotonous arrangement of sen tences is fatal to the attention of the listener or reader, it is need ful that to plainness should be added various attractions and ornaments. The sentences must he built up in a manner which displays variety and flexibility. There should be a harmony, and even a rhythm, in the progress of style, care being taken that this rhythm and this harmony are not recognizably metrical. Again, the colour and form of adjectives, and their sufficient yet not excessive recurrence, is an important factor in the construction of prose. The omission of certain faults, too, is essential. In every language grammatical correctness is obligatory. Here we see a distinction between mere conversation, which is loose, frag mentary and often even ungrammatical; and prose, which is bound to weed away whatever is slovenly, and to watch closely lest merely colloquial expressions should slip in. What is required is a moderate and reasonable elevation without bombast or bathos. Not everything that is loosely said is prose, and the celebrated phrase of M. Jourdain is not exactly true, for all the loose phrases which M. Jourdain had used in his life, though they were certainly

not verse, were not prose either. We must be content to say that prose is literary expression not subjected to any species of metri cal law.

Greek.

The beginnings of Greek prose are very obscure. It is probable that they took the form of inscriptions, and gradually developed into historical and topographical records. We come down to something definite when we reach Hecataeus and Hero dorus ; and, although their writings have disappeared, we know enough to see that by the 5th century B.C. the use of prose in its modern sense had been established. We even know the character of the style of Hecataeus, and we hear of its clearness, its gram matical purity, its individuality—qualities which have been valued ever since. These writers were succeeded by Hellanicus, who wrote many historical books now lost, and by Herodotus, whose noble storehouse of chronicle and legend is our earliest monument of European prose. When once non-metrical language could be used as by Herodotus, it was plain that all departments of human knowledge were open to it. But it is in Ionia and the Asiatic islands that we find it cultivated by philosophers and critics. The earliest of these masters of prose survive only in much later records of their opinions; in philosophy the actual writings of Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras and Empedocles are lost, and it is likely that their cosmological rhapsodies were at least partly metrical. We come into clearer air when we cross to Attica : Thucydides' priceless work has most fortunately come down to us; and Xenophon continued it in the spirit of Thucydides, and carried Greek prose to a great height of easy distinction. But it is in philosophy that prose in Greece gains flexibility and variety, proving itself an unsurpassed vehicle for the finest human thought. The philosopher Plato is the greatest prose writer of Greece, and, in the view of many well qualified to judge, of the world. In his dialogues we see what splendour, what elasticity, what exactitude, this means of expression had in so short a time devel oped; how little there was for later prose-writers to add. The rhetoricians were even more highly admired by antiquity than the philosophers, and ancient, unlike modern, opinion would perhaps have set Demosthenes higher than Plato. In Aristotle we see the conscious art of prose-writing subordinated to the preservation and explanation of facts, and after Aristotle's day there is little to record in a hasty outline.