We are speaking now of prose, not of opinions, and we may safely introduce the name of a living critic, William Winter. For nearly half a century Mr. Winter has written prose about the theatre, and although that prose was produced for a morning newspaper it was carefully and consistently balanced and welded, and, when the subject demanded it, rose, according to its creator's ideas of beauty, into the heightened eloquence of sentence rhythm and syllabic harmony. Leisure may improve, but haste cannot prevent the rhythm of prose, provided the instinct for it resides in the writer, and the opportunity exists for practice and expression. Two examples of Mr. Winter's use of rhythm come to my memory, and I quote only phrases, not whole sentences, merely because I am sure of no more. Writing one morning of a new and very 'modern' play, presented the previous evening by a well-known actress, he said: 'Sarah Bernhardt at least made her sexual monsters interesting, wielding the lethal hatpin or the deadly hatchet with Gallic grace and sweet celerity.' Again, in reviewing Pinero's _Iris_, he took up two of Henry Arthur Jones's phrases, recently made current in a lecture, and played with them, ending with mellifluous scorn, 'Such are "the great realities of modern life," flowers of disease and blight that fringe the charnel house of the "serious drama."'
These are certainly examples of rhythmic, or cadenced prose, and they are examples taken from journalistic reviews. They admirably express the writer's point of view toward his subject matter, but they also reveal his care for the manner of expression, they satisfy the ear; and therefore to one at all sensitive to literature they are doubly satisfying. The arrow of irony is ever more delightful when it sings on its flight. The trick, then, can be done. Mr. Winter, too often perhaps for modern ears, performed it by recourse to the Johnsonian balance of period and almost uniform, swelling roll. But that is neither here nor there. The point is that he performed it--and that it is no longer performed by the new generation, either in newspaper columns, or, we will add at once, anywhere else. Rhythmic prose, prose cadenced to charm the ear and by its melodies and harmonies properly adjusted to heighten, as with an under-song, the emotional appeal of the ideas expressed, is no longer written. It appears to be no longer wanted. We are fallen upon harsh and colloquial times.