THE TECHNIQUE OF FORM
imitate successfully all his faults of construction, while the magic that makes the book unique forever eludes it imitators.
It seems inevitable that in discussing the technique of form the argument should tend constantly to revert to prose rather than poetry, and to the novel in preference to all other prose forms. And it is quite natural that this should be so. The necessity of structure in verse is in a way axiomatic; it enters into the very definition. In short, in all verse, from the greatest to the least, there is something which may not unjustly be called architectural in the way it is built. Indeed, the more formal types, like the rondeau, the ballade, the rondel, the sonnet, offer to the eye, as they lie upon the printed page, as definite a suggestion of a ground plan as any blue print of the modern draughtsman. The regularity of recurring rhymes, the marshalled lines of numbered syllables and
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