RHYTHM, a certain swing or balance in bodily movement, music, verse or prose; often extended by metaphor to apply in other spheres (e.g., "rhythm of life"). The early critic of pros ody, Aristoxenus (c. 320 B.c.), distinguished three elements in rhythm—the speech (MEL.$), the melody (i.caos) and the bodily motion (Kivnats auwarucii); but the later tendency has been to separate these elements, and to emphasize more and more the distinction between them. Precision, however, has hardly yet been reached; and there are few subjects on which opinions, even among experts, differ more widely. In a short article it will be necessary to make controversial statements without defending them by argument.
Rhythm in Verse.—The between rhythm and metre is hard to draw. Aristotle is very vague on the question : Suidas says that rhythm is the father of metre, and Quintilian that rhythm is male and metre female. Such sayings merely prove the difficulty of measuring a delicate instinct by rule of three. It would appear, however, that to the Greeks metre was concerned with the measurements of poetic periods, and rhythm with their effective chanting or recitation ; it cannot therefore have depended largely on ictus or stress, and the word is therefore often applied to prose as well as to verse. It is probable that, in a quantitative language like Greek, this stress (as it is in modern French) was far less strongly marked than (e.g.) in English; but it is a mis take to think it entirely absent, as, conversely, it is a mistake to think that in English, though accent is, of course, predomi nant, quantity is unimportant.
As Schipper says, "in English long and short syllables have no constant length, no constant relation; they depend on the context. They do not determine rhythm, but they help to regulate it." No rigid laws, therefore, can be laid down as to the proper employment of rhythmic balance. A subtle feeling must govern the periodic progress of sounds in harmony with the emotions it is desired to express. When the ear is satisfied, we feel that the rhythm is adequate ; and a very brief study will show us that the ear demands different rhythms for an expression of different emotions. The genius of the poet is, on this side, revealed by the
unforced skill with which he selects the appropriate rhythm. Ecstasy, e.g., takes a quick, eager, rising movement; sadness is full, slow and emphatic; meditation deliberate; mystery and sus pense are faint, languorous and throbbing; often, indeed, the rhythm is so intimately linked with human feeling that no analy sis can disentangle them.
Pauses, again, are an almost essential element in modern rhythm. In Shakespeare and Milton, e.g., a pause may take the place of a whole beat ; and the right use of such pauses often lends a variety which increases the beauty of a passage. Still more im portant is what has been called the "free musical paragraph," of which Milton, in Paradise Lost, is so consummate a master. Here the balance, overstepping the limits of the verse-form, and felt over wide spaces, is perhaps the chief glory of the poet's style; and the skill with which one "paragraph" is set against another forms, so to speak, a larger rhythm containing and hold ing up the smaller rhythms of the single paragraphs and of the verse-form. In rhymed verse this larger rhythm is represented by the progression of the stanza in itself, and by the linking of the stanzas into harmonious wholes. Thus in the full meaning of the term, rhythm depends at least as much on the orderly arrange ment of the thought as on the balance of the Words.
Rhythm in Prose.—We perceive then that there is a rhythm in prose no less than in verse ; and this appears not only in the balance of the sentence, but in the arrangement of the sentences in paragraphs and in the building up of paragraphs into chapters. Here, as in everything else, the art must be concealed. A me chanical, epigrammatic balance, like that of Johnson, is too obvi ous, and ere long tends to weary. The truly rhythmic prose writer satisfies at once the ear and the mind as a skilled dancer satisfies at once the ear and the eye, without drawing attention to the means by which the effect is attained.
On the special laws of rhythm in the poetry of different na tions—Greek, Hebrew, Old English, and the like—it is impossible to speak here; the works of scholars should be studied.