--by putting in the word "hastily" in the first line, we have not _destroyed_ the rhythm; we still have the rhythmic sequence, "my hat upon my head," unchanged; but we have merely _added_ brief rhythms, namely that of the word "hastily," which we may call a modern or logaœdic dactyl (hastily)[**Symbols above hastily]; that is to say, instead now of leaving our first line _all_ iambic, we have varied that rhythmus with another; and in so doing have converted our verse into prose. Similarly, in the second line, "rushed forth," which an English tongue would here deliver as a spondee--rūshed fōrth--_varies_ the rhythm by this spondaic intervention, but still leaves us the original rhythmic cluster, "into the Strand." So, of the other introduced words, "encountered" and "hanging," each has its own rhythm--for an English tongue always gives these words with definite time-relations between the syllables, that is, in rhythm. Therefore, in order to make prose out of this verse, we have not destroyed the rhythms, we have added to them. We have not made it _formless_, we have made it contain _more forms_. Now, in this analysis, which I have tried to bring to its very simplest terms, I have presented what seems to me the true genesis of prose; and have set up a distinction, which, though it may appear abstract and insignificant at present, we shall presently see lies at the bottom of some most remarkable and pernicious fallacies concerning literature. That distinction is, that the relation of prose to verse is _not_ the relation of the _formless_ to the _formal_: it is the relation of _more forms_ to _fewer forms_. It is this relation which makes prose a _freer_ form than verse. When we are writing in verse, if we have the line with an iambus (say) then our next words or syllables must make an iambus, and we are confined to that form; but if in prose, our next word need not be an iambus because the first was, but may be any one of several possible rhythmic forms; thus, while in verse we _must_ use _one_ form, in prose we _may_ use _many_ forms; and just to the extent of these possible forms is prose freer than verse. We shall find occasion presently to remember that prose is freer than verse, _not_ because prose is formless while verse is formal, but because any given sequence of prose has _more forms_ in it than a sequence of verse.