Such an anthology, the compass and
variety of our prose literature being considered, might well follow
exclusively some special line of interest in it; exhibiting, for
instance, what is so obviously striking, its imaginative power, or
its (legitimately) poetic beauty, or again, its philosophical
capacity. Mr. Saintsbury's well-considered Specimens of English
Prose Style, from Malory to Macaulay (Kegan Paul), a volume, as we
think, which bears fresh witness to the truth of the old remark that
it takes a scholar indeed to make a [4] good literary selection, has
its motive sufficiently indicated in the very original "introductory
essay," which might well stand, along with the best of these extracts
from a hundred or more deceased masters of English, as itself a
document or standard, in the matter of prose style. The essential
difference between poetry and prose--"that other beauty of prose"--in
the words of the motto he has chosen from Dryden, the first master of
the sort of prose he prefers:--that is Mr. Saintsbury's burden. It
is a consideration, undoubtedly, of great importance both for the
writer and the critic; in England especially, where, although (as Mr.
Saintsbury rightly points out, in correction of an imperfectly
informed French critic of our literature) the radical distinction
between poetry and prose has ever been recognized by its students,
yet the imaginative impulse, which is perhaps the richest of our
purely intellectual gifts, has been apt to invade the province of
that tact and good judgment, alike as to matter and manner, in which
we are not richer than other people.
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