Page:Essays in idleness.djvu/139

 Rh limits, which constitutes the achievement of the poet, and gives beauty and dignity to his art. "Where is the man who can flatter himself that he knows the language of prose, if he has not assiduously practiced the language of poetry?" asks M. Francisque Sarcey, whose requirements are needlessly exacting, but whose views would have been cordially indorsed by at least one great master of English. Dryden always maintained that the admirable quality of his prose was due to his long training in a somewhat mechanical verse. A more modern and diverting approximation of M. Sarcey's views may be found in the robust statement of Benjamin Franklin: "I approved, for my part, the amusing one's self now and then with poetry, so far as to improve one's language, but no farther." It is a pity that people cannot always be born in the right generation! What a delicious picture is presented to our fancy of a nineteenth-century Franklin amusing himself and improving his language by an occasional study of "Sordello"!

The absolute mastery of words, which is the prerogative of genius, can never be acquired