The French have perfected the art of poetical prose,[86-A] or prose poetry, probably more than any other nation. The reason may be that they have not been prolific of good poetry in verse, and have instead reserved their poetry for prose, a more natural medium than Alexandrine lines.
Fénelon was one of the first moderns who attacked verse. In two critical works, Dialogues on Eloquence and Letters to the French Academy (there is an English translation of both, out of print), he emphasized the insignificant part played by versification in poetry. He held that there was no true eloquence without a due mixture of poetry, that poetry was the very soul of eloquence. He said that there were many poets who were poetical without making verses, and he considered versification distinct from poetry. In his definition of poetry he excluded a consideration of versification. He thought the perfection of French verse impossible, that versification loses more than it gains by rhyme, and that French poets were cramped by versification. He wanted superfluous ornaments removed and the necessary parts turned into natural ornaments. Still he did not insist on a complete abandonment of rhyme, but wanted greater freedom. His biographer, St. Cyr, says that Fénelon wanted to abolish verse altogether in French poetry. Fénelon also wrote a novel in prose poetry in 1699, Télémaque. But prose poetry existed in France before him, in old romances like the story of Aucassin and
Nicolette and in Bossuet's funeral orations. His example was followed by Sainte Pierre, in Paul and Virginia, by Prévost in Manon Lescaut, by Rousseau and especially by Chateaubriand in Atala, The Genius of Christianity and The Martyrs. Unfortunately, Fénelon insisted in introducing the clichés of verse into prose; artificial and unnatural language hence ruined some of his work and assisted in bringing the term prose poetry into contempt.
The French have always regarded the poet in a broader sense than have the English. The article on poetry in the French Encyclopedia deals with prose poems as well as with verse poems. Victor Hugo in his Shakespeare, when he calls the lists of poets, mentions prose writers like Diderot, Rousseau, Balzac, Chateaubriand, George Sand, Le Sage and Cervantes. He who was himself a great poet knew that poetry did not depend on metre.
Eugene Véron, the great French critic, author of a valuable work on Æsthetics (fortunately translated into English), also takes a broad conception of the term poetry. He says that it would be absurd to deny Molière's L'Avare is poetry because it is in prose, for poetical, creative imagination and personal emotions are at work here. He states that there was poetry in the story of Don Juan before Corneille put it in verse. Versification, he urges, does not constitute poetry. He sees that verse would not have improved such prose poems as Paul and Virginia, La Mare au Diable, or L'Oiseau (Michelet), and he places in the front rank of poetry passages from Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet (no doubt referring to some of the famous funeral orations) and Mirabeau. He also says it is impossible to refuse to see poetic character in the novel, for this deals with the creation of character and the portrayal of passions.
I do not wish to go into the prose poetry written by other nations, for every literature is full of it.
There is a growing tendency in England to encourage prose poetry.[88-A] De Quincey having made a special plea for impassioned prose is looked upon as the father of it, though there was prose poetry in English literature from the earliest times; Malory, Sidney, Sir Thomas Browne, Raleigh, Drummond, Milton, Bunyan, Taylor and Fuller were great prose poets.
John Stuart Mill and Lord Beaconsfield both recognized the utterly negligible rôle of metre in determining the nature of poetry. In an early essay, originally published before he was thirty and collected with another under the title Poetry and Its Varieties, Mill gives us his definition of poetry. Guided by a statement of the author of the Corn Law Rhymes, Ebenezer Elliot, that poetry is impassioned truth, and by another definition from Blackwood's, that poetry is "man's thought tinged by his feelings," he says, "Every truth which a human being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry when shown through any impassioned medium, when invested with the coloring of joy, or grief, or pity, or affection, or admiration, or reverence, or awe, or even hatred, or terror: and, unless so colored, nothing, be it as interesting as it may, is poetry." There is nothing said in this definition about rhythm or metre, and indeed Mill regarded as the vulgarest of all any definition of poetry which confounds it with metrical composition.
An idea emotionally treated becomes poetry whether in prose or verse, whether rhythmical or not. Mill understood
that, yet he erred when he assigned a minor rôle to the emotions excited by the incidents in prose fiction, though it is true that the emotions of excitement wakened by the mere novel of adventure are indicative of a lower order of poetry. It is to be regretted, however, that about five years later he somewhat modified his main views.