The rhythm of prose is inseparable from its sense. This sense-rhythm is abetted and supported by the mechanical rhythm of syllables, but its larger outlines are staked out by tones of interrogation, by outcries, expostulations, threats, entreaties, resolves, by the tones of a multitude of emotions. These are heard as interior voices, and have their accompaniment of peculiar bodily motions, such as gritting of teeth, holding of breath, clenching of fists, tensions, and relaxations of numberless obscure muscles. All the organs of the body compose the orchestra that plays the rhythm of prose, which is not only a rhythm, but a tune. In short, the really important sort of rhythm in prose is that of phrase, clause, and sentence, and this rhythm is marked not merely by stresses, but by tones, which are of as great variety as the modes of putting a proposition, dogmatic, hypothetical, imperative, persuasive; or as the emotional tone of thought, solemn, jubilant, placid, mysterious.
Good prose is rhythmical because thought is; and thought is rhythmical because it is always going somewhere, sometimes strolling, sometimes marching, sometimes dancing. Types of thought have their characteristic rhythms, and a resemblance is discernible between these and types of dancing. Note, for example, the Oriental undulation of De Quincey,[127] the sprightly two-stepping of Stevenson,[128] the placid glide of Howells,[129] the march of Gibbon.[130] A man who wishes to put the accent of moral authority into his style writes in a sententious, staccato rhythm. One who would appear profound adopts the voluminous, long-winded German period. The apocalyptic spirit manifests itself in a buoyant, shouting, leaping rhythm. Meditative calmness adopts the gliding movement that suggests the waltz.
Now, why do we become uneasy the moment we suspect a writer of aiming at musical effects? It is because we know instinctively that every thought creates its own rhythm, and that when a writer's attention is upon his rhythm, he is bent upon something else than his thought processes. The only way of giving the impression of thought that is not original or spontaneous is by imitating the rhythm of that thought. For real meanings cannot be borrowed. They are always new. Real thought is an action, an original adventure. It pulsates, and the body pulsates with it. No writer can produce this sense of original adventure in us unless he has it himself.
The various classes of writers and talkers whose business it is to sway the minds of others understand as well as the medicine-man in the primitive tribe the part that rhythm plays in their work. The rhythm of each is characteristic. The swelling, pompous senatorial style that suggests the weight of nations behind the speaker is familiar.
I admit that there is an ultimate violent remedy, above the Constitution and in defiance of the Constitution, which may be resorted to when a revolution is to be justified. But I do not admit that, under the Constitution and in conformity with it, there is any mode in which a state government, as a member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the general Government by force of her own laws under any circumstances whatever.
Rhythm of this sort is not a matter of accented and unaccented syllables, but of length of phrase and suspension of voice as it gathers volume and momentum to break finally in an overwhelming roar.
Then there is the suave, insinuating clerical style that lulls opposition and penetrates the conscience of the listener with its smooth, unhalting naïveté.
How many of us feel that those who have committed grave outward transgressions into which we have not fallen because the motives to them were not present with us, or because God's grace kept us hedged round by influences which resisted them—may nevertheless have had hearts which answered more to God's heart, which entered far more into the grief and joy of His Spirit, than ours ever did.
Or, if the preacher is of the apocalyptic variety, we get the explosive shocks, the hammer-blows, and the thunderous reverberations.
Ah, no, this deep-hearted son of the wilderness with his burning black eyes and open, social, deep soul, had other thoughts in him than ambition.... The great mystery of existence, as I said, glared in upon him, with its terrors, with its splendors; no hear-says could hide that unspeakable fact, “Here am I.”