Eliot, George - London Quarterly Review (review date 1868)
London Quarterly Review (review date 1868)
SOURCE: Review of The Spanish Gypsy, in London Quarterly Review, Vol. 31, No. LXI, 1868, pp. 160-88.
[In the following assessment of The Spanish Gypsy, the reviewer argues that the poem "must be considered rather as a highly poetic work elaborated in the prose method, than as a production strictly poetical in all respects."]
Hitherto she has kept just on the verge of verse, at the extreme pitch of poetry in prose; and this is, perhaps, one of her greatest merits in workmanship. In writing high-toned and intensely-poetic prose, a besetting difficulty is to avoid breaking into rhythm. To one with a thorough command of language, the mere transit from prose to blank verse would present no difficulty whatever, and would often be a great relief; but the great feat, when under the excitement of working prose artistically, is to keep it thoroughly true to prose principles; and, at...
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