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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: more lawless melody, patent as they are to English hearing,
are already silent in the ears of our next neighbours; for in
France the oratorical accent and the pattern of the web have
almost or altogether succeeded to their places; and the
French prose writer would be astounded at the labours of his
brother across the Channel, and how a good quarter of his
toil, above all INVITA MINERVA, is to avoid writing verse.
So wonderfully far apart have races wandered in spirit, and
so hard it is to understand the literature next door!
Yet French prose is distinctly better than English; and
French verse, above all while Hugo lives, it will not do to
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