The Cardinal Virtue of Prose散文的本質特征

By Arthur Clutton-Brock

Prose of its very nature is longer than verse,and the virtues peculiar to it manifest themselves gradually. If the cardinal virtue of poetry is love, the cardinal virtue of prose is justice; and, whereas love makes you act and speak on the spur of moment, justice needs inquiry, patience, and a control even of the noblest passions. By justice here I do not mean justice only to particular people or ideas, but a habit of justice in all the processes of thought, a style tranquillized and a form moulded by that habit.

本質上，散文長于韻文，散文獨有的品質逐漸顯現。若詩歌的主要品質是愛，那散文的主要品質就是正義;而且，盡管愛會讓你一時心血來潮的去動作和表達，但正義則需要質詢，耐心和對強烈感情的控制。這里所說的正義，并非專對某些人或思想，正義是所有思想過程中的習慣，以及由此習慣鑄就的形態和沉靜的風格。

The master of prose is not cold, but will not let any word or image inflame him with a heat irrelevant to his purpose. Unhasting, unresting, he pursues it, subduing all the riches of his mind to it, rejecting all beauties that are not germane to it; making his own beauty out of the very accomplishment of it, out of the whole work and its proportions, so that you must read to the end before you know that it is beautiful.

散文大家并不冷漠，但也不會因頭腦發熱，讓任意與其目的無關的詞匯或形象擾亂自己。從容不迫，堅持不懈，他追尋著它，獻出自己畢生的智慧，趕走所有與它無關的浮華。成就散文創造自己的美，美滲透于整體和部分，所以你只有把它讀完，才能發現它的美。

But he has his reward, for he is trusted and convinces, as those who are at the mercy of their own eloquence do not; and he gives a pleasure all the greater for being hardly noticed. In the best prose, whether narrative or argument, we are so led on as we read, that we do not stop to applaud the writer, nor do we stop to question him.

但他也有所回報，因為人們信任他，他也使人們信服，這正是那些靠口才的人所不能得到的;他不露聲色而給人更大的愉悅。最好的散文，無論是敘述或辯論，都使我們著迷，已無心停下來為作者叫好，亦或質詢什么。