The same remarks apply to prose composition. Distinctions of style occupy but a small share of academical attention; and that most important rhetorical exercise, the analysis of the Period, has fallen into general disregard. Rules for composition certainly exist, but they are seldom made the subject of prelection; and consequently bad models find their way into the hands, and too often pervert the taste, of the rising generation. The cramped, ungrammatical style of Carlyle, and the vague pomposity of Emerson, are copied by numerous pupils; the value of words has risen immensely in the literary market, whilst that of ideas has declined; in order to arrive at the meaning of an author of the new school, we are forced to crack a sentence as hard and angular as a hickory-nut, and, after all our pains, we are usually rewarded with no better kernel than a maggot. The _Strayed Reveller_ is rather a curious compound of imitation. He claims to be a classical scholar of no mean acquirements, and a good deal of his inspiration is traceable to the Greek dramatists. In certain of his poems he tries to think like Sophocles, and has so far succeeded as to have constructed certain choric passages, which might be taken by an unlettered person for translations from the antique. The language, though hard, is rather stately; and many of the individual images are by no means destitute of grace. The epithets which he employs bear the stamp of the Greek coinage; but, upon the whole, we must pronounce these specimens failures. The images are not bound together or grouped artistically, and the rhythm which the author has selected is, to an English ear, utterly destitute of melody. It is strange that people cannot be brought to understand that the genius and capabilities of one language differ essentially from those of another: and that the measures of antiquity are altogether unsuitable for modern verse. It is no doubt possible, by a Procrustean operation, to force words into almost any kind of mould; a chorus may be constructed, which, so far as scanning goes, might satisfy the requirements of a pedagogue, but the result of the experiment will inevitably show that melody has been sacrified in the attempt. Now melody is a charm without which poetry is of little worth; we are not quite sure whether it would not be more correct to say, that without melody poetry has no existence. Our author does not seem to have the slightest idea of this, and accordingly he treats us to such passages as the following:-- "No, no, old men, Creon I curse not. I weep, Thebans, One than Creon crueller far, For he, he, at least by slaying her, August laws doth mightily vindicate: But thou, too bold, headstrong, pitiless, Ah me! honourest more than thy lover, O Antigone, A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse."