[9] The language of prose is not necessarily unrhythmical, nor is it always commonplace, as witness, for example, the more moving and imaginative passages of the English Bible. On this point consult Gummere's 'Beginnings of Poetry,' Chapter ii (Rhythm as the Essential Fact of Poetry, especially pp. 56-60); Watts's article 'Poetry' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and the _Publications of the Modern Language Association_, xx. 4. J. CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO TRAGEDY 10. These considerations may explain to us why the production of a great tragedy is almost an impossibility in our own time. The age most favourable to it would seem to be one in which men stand on the edge of an old and but half-known world--as Aeschylus and Sophocles stood on the edge of the mythologic, Shakespeare on that of the feudal world--an age of sufficient culture and reflection for men to be conscious of the glory they have left behind, while yet civilisation has not reached the stage of acquiescence in things as they are, and scepticism as to all beyond them. Those great situations furnished by the mysterious past, in which passion quits the earth, soon lose their charm, and with the reign of wonder that of tragedy ceases. At Athens it gives place to the new comedy, whose highest boast was to copy present life ([Greek: o Menandre kai Bie, poteros ar' humon poteron apemimesato];):[10] in modern Europe it has yielded to the novel. FOOTNOTE: [10] A saying of Aristophanes, the Grammarian, quoted by Syrianus on Hermogenes, IV. 101. It may be translated: "O Menander and Life! Which of you copies the other?" II. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART A. BEGINNINGS OF THE NOVEL