Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

It must be so.

NORTH

The fountain of Law to Composition in Prose is the Understanding. The fountain of Law to Composition in Verse is the Will.

SEWARD

?

NORTH

A discourse in prose resembles a chain. The sentences are the successive links – all holding to one another – and holding one another. All is bound.

SEWARD

Well?

NORTH

A discourse in verse resembles a billowy sea. The verses are the waves that rise and fall – to our apprehension – each by impulse, life, will of its own. All is free.

SEWARD

Ay. Now your meaning emerges.

NORTH

E profundis clamavi. In eloquent prose, the feeling fits itself into the process of the thinking. In true verse, the thinking fits itself into the process of the feeling.

SEWARD

I perpend.

NORTH

In prose, the general distribution and composition of the matter belong to the reign of Necessity. The order of the parts, and the connexion of part with part, are obliged – logically justifiable – say, then, are demonstrable. See an Oration of Demosthenes. In verse, that distribution and composition belong to the reign of Liberty. That order and connexion are arbitrary – passionately justifiable – say, then, are delectable. See an Ode of Pindar.

SEWARD

Publish – publish.

NORTH

In prose the style is last – in verse first; in prose the sense controls the sound – in verse the sound the sense; in prose you speak – in verse you sing; in prose you live in the abstract – in verse in the concrete; in prose you present notions – in verse visions; in prose you expound – in verse you enchant; in prose it is much if now and then you are held in the sphere of the fascinated senses – in verse if of the calm understanding.

BULLER

Will you have the goodness, sir, to say all that over again?

NORTH

I have forgot it. The lines in the countenance of Prose are austere. The look is shy, reserved, governed – like the fixed steady lineaments of mountains. The hues that suffuse the face of her sister Verse vary faster than those with which the western or the eastern sky momently reports the progress of the sinking, of the fallen, but not yet lost, of the coming or of the risen sun.

BULLER

I have jotted that down, sir.

NORTH

And I hope you will come to understand it. Candidly speaking, 'tis more than I do.

SEWARD

I do perfectly – and it is as true as beautiful, sir.

BULLER

Equally so.

NORTH

I venerate Wordsworth. Wordsworth's poetry stands distinct in the world. That which to other men is an occasional pleasure, or possibly delight, and to other poets an occasional transport, THE SEEING THIS VISIBLE UNIVERSE, is to him – a Life – one Individual Human Life – namely, his Own – travelling its whole Journey from the Cradle to the Grave. And that Life – for what else could he do with it? – he has versified – sung. And there is no other such Song. It is a Memorable Fact of our Civilisation – a Memorable Fact in the History of Human Kind – that one perpetual song. Perpetual but infinitely various – as a river of a thousand miles, traversing, from its birthplace in the mountains, diverse regions, wild and inhabited, to the ocean-receptacle.

BULLER

Confoundedly prosaic at times.

NORTH

He, more than any other true poet, approaches Verse to Prose – never, I believe, or hardly ever, quite blends them.

BULLER

Often – often – often, my dear sir.

NORTH

Seldom – seldom – seldom if ever, my dear sir. He tells his Life. His Poems are, of necessity, an Autobiography. The matter of them, then, is his personal reality; but Prose is, all over and properly, the language of Personal Realities. Even with him, however, so peculiarly conditioned, and, as well as I am able to understand his Proposition, against his own Theory of writing, Verse maintains, as by the laws of our insuppressible nature it always will maintain, its sacred Right and indefeasible Prerogative.

To conclude our conversation —

BULLER

Or Monologue.

NORTH

Epos is Human History in its magnitude in Verse. In Prose, National History offers itself in parallelism. The coincidence is broad and unquestioned; but on closer inspection, differences great and innumerable spring up and unfold themselves, until at last you might almost persuade yourself that the first striking resemblance deceived you, and that the two species lack analogy, so many other kinds does the Species in Verse embosom, and so escaping are the lines of agreement in the instant in which you attempt fixing them.