English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History

SPECIMENS ILLUSTRATING ITS PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY
CHOSEN AND EDITED BY RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN, PH.D. Associate Professor in Leland Stanford Junior University
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1903, BY HENRY HOLT & CO.
TO my Father and Mother WHO HAVE GIVEN BOTH THE INSPIRATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL MY STUDIES

The aim of this book is to give the materials for the inductive study of English verse. Its origin was in certain university courses, for which it proved to be necessary—often for use in a single hour's work—to gather almost numberless books, some of which must ordinarily be inaccessible except in the vicinity of large libraries. I have tried to extract from these books the materials necessary for the study of English verse-forms, adding notes designed to make the specimens intelligible and useful.
Dealing with a subject where theories are almost as numerous as those who have written on it, it has been my purpose to avoid the setting forth of my own opinions, and to present the subject-matter in a way suited, so far as possible, to the use of those holding widely divergent views. In the arrangement and naming of the earlier sections of the book, some systematic theory of the subject—accepted at least tentatively—was indeed indispensable; but I trust that even here those who would apply to English verse a different classification or terminology may be able to discard what they cannot approve and to make use of the specimens from their own standpoint. Even where (as in these introductory sections) the notes seem to overtop the text somewhat threateningly, they are invariably intended—as the type indicates—to be subordinate. Where it has been possible to do so, I have preferred to present comments on the specimens in the words of other writers, and have not confined these notes to opinions with which I wholly agree, but only to those which seem worthy of attention. My own views on the more disputed elements of the subject (such as the relations of time and accent in our verse, the presence of quantity in English, and the terminology of the subject) I have reserved for Part Three, where I trust they will be found helpful by some readers, but where they may easily be passed over.